MAKKAH, 19 October 2006 — Ramadan is a time when many pilgrims arrive in the Kingdom with the intention of spending the holy month in the blessed city of Makkah and then overstaying until Haj.
Arab News recently accompanied Passport Department officials in Makkah when they arrested pilgrims of various Arab nationalities that had outstayed their visas. The pilgrims were allegedly preparing to leave their apartment building for a “safe house” with the help of their travel agent when officials, acting on intelligence reports, foiled the plan.
Many of the pilgrims that intend to overstay until Haj do so for economic reasons. Some simply cannot afford to go to their home countries and then return for Haj. Most people already find it a huge burden to pay for just one visa and ticket let alone buying a second set.
Other pilgrims are simply victims of unscrupulous travel agents, who take advantage of them by promising them that they can stay in the Kingdom for one month or longer while only arranging 10-day visas. Such pilgrims violate the law without knowing and put the blame on the agents back home when they are caught.
Reda Nawar, an Egyptian pilgrim, said he paid an Umrah travel agent in Egypt 15,000 Egyptian pounds for five people to come to the Kingdom and stay until Haj.
“The agent told us that we could stay until the end of Ramadan. Once in Makkah, we gave our passports to his company representatives and we were to collect them two days before our departure to Egypt. I was surprised when the Passport Department officials came and arrested us because we were overstayers. The agent tricked us,” he said.
Rajab Al-Jundi, head of a group of Egyptian pilgrims, said a travel agent had defrauded them. He said the agent had made false promises and collected more than 100,000 Egyptian pounds from the poor pilgrims.
Abdul Aal Ali, another Egyptian pilgrim who was also caught by the authorities, said: “We were told that the visa would allow us to stay in the Kingdom for only nine days. The local agent in Egypt offered to give us shelter in the Kingdom with the cooperation of a local agent in Saudi if we paid him 3,000 Egyptian pounds. We all agreed to the price but our plan did not succeed.”
Ali added that he could not afford coming to the Kingdom twice for Haj and Umrah and so had hoped to stay until Haj. “The government should introduce a unified visa that allows pilgrims to stay in the Kingdom for both Umrah and Haj,” he said, adding that if he and the rest of the Egyptian pilgrims left the Kingdom, then they would have to stay three or five years in Egypt collecting money to return to the holy city.
“Most of us are village people and we earn little money. Collecting 3,000 Egyptian pounds is not an easy job for us,” he said.
Capt. Mansour Al-Otaibi, head of the Passport Department, said many pilgrims like to remain in the Kingdom until Haj, violating local rules and regulations. “Investigations have revealed that these overstaying pilgrims were planning to move to another location to hide until Haj season,” he said.
Saudi Arabia runs strict quotas in how many pilgrims are allowed into the Kingdom each year for Haj. Authorities say that Umrah pilgrims that overstay prevent Hajis from an opportunity to fulfill their rituals in an orderly and comfortable way. Overstayers are known to add to the crowds causing authorities a nightmare in organizing the pilgrimage each year.
