RIYADH, 15 January 2006 — As the Haj came to a close Friday pilgrims returning here offered their opinions that provide insight into improvement that could be made to the conduct of the annual pilgrimage.

Top of the list for Indian pilgrim Mustafa Hashim, who returned to Riyadh yesterday, was the need for more security personnel.

Mustafa and a friend carried out all the rituals on foot to get past the traffic jams. They were thus able to observe the real situation on the ground from close quarters. They said that the 60,000-strong security force was totally inadequate to control the surging tide of millions of pilgrims in close quarters, especially around the Jamrat area.

As a truncated force, they said, the security cordon they tried to establish at the entrance to the Jamrat areas simply broke down under the overwhelming pressure of pilgrims.

“This created a vacuum and the pilgrims started tumbling over one another in the stampede,” said Mustafa.

Hashim said that one of the factors behind Thursday’s Jamrat tragedy, besides pilgrims’ baggage and disorderly conduct, was the inability of security forces to send pilgrims in batches.

Indian housewife Tahseen Khanum suggested that in future there should be separate arrangements for women who perform the Jamrat stoning rituals as they were being pushed and jostled by hefty male pilgrims.

Pilgrim Muneef Ali Mirza also complained of mobile service providers for not making any arrangements whereby pilgrims could recharge the batteries. The failure of the mobile-phone network together with dead batteries created a situation in which they were unable to communicate in spite of having sufficient credit in their prepaid cards. The need for a large number of communication towers was felt acutely during the Haj period.

“To test what was going on, I rang up to speak to my partner seated next to me,” said Ali Mirza. “The recorded message said, ‘The number you have called cannot be reached at this time. Please try later.’” Both lines were open, he said, calling the message “misleading.” Arab News tried to reach STC’s PR department for a response, but nobody answered yesterday.

In spite of some drawbacks, as well as Thursday’s tragedy, this year’s Haj was marked by some improvements.

Security has been a dominant concern during this year’s Haj, with the Saudi authorities spending over SR25 million on security. The arrangements went high-tech this year when they signed up a Saudi company for fitting their vehicles with Global Positioning System capability to expedite emergency response.

High technology also found application in the Mina slaughterhouse, thanks to a contract awarded to a Saudi firm by the Islamic Development Bank. As a result, butchers can no longer cheat pilgrims by tampering with the weight and number of sheep for which they buy coupons under the sacrificial meat utilization program managed by the IDB.

The new technology installed at the slaughterhouse facilitates online transmission of data to the IDB on the weight of each animal and the number of sheep sacrificed, according to Zulqarnain Ali Khan, CEO of Zultec. He said these slaughterhouses work 24 hours a day for approximately five days during the Haj period.

While the pilgrims were all praise for the Haj facilities and smooth operations overall, they directed their ire at the tawafa establishments for not keeping their word.

Shoab Hasan, a senior government official from the south Indian state of Karnataka, told Arab News that despite the promise given to him in India that he would be put up in a hotel opposite the Grand Mosque in Makkah, he found himself accommodated at a place five kilometers from the mosque. As a result, he had to shell out SR30 per day on commuting by car back and forth.

Syed Ajazullah Hussaini, computer programmer from a Riyadh-based firm, said he missed the bus while traveling from Mina to Arafat and now had to foot the distance along with his wife and two children. He accused the driver of playing games and making false promises that he would be picking them up.

On the IT front, the Saudi Boy Scouts — responsible for helping lost pilgrims — set up a website for tracing missing children.