MAKKAH, 12 December 2006 — A group of 96 Haj pilgrims from Indonesia are threatening to sue their country’s Haj Delegation when they return home for the accommodations it set up for them in the holy city.
“We were shocked to discover that we were expected to squeeze inside a small basement that no person should have to bear,” said Rostna Naseor, one of the pilgrims, who claims that the Haj Delegation had assured them they would be set up in a three-star hotel.
“If I could afford to move I would.”
The pilgrims complain that the accommodations, in a windowless basement garage without restroom facilities, lack basic amenities or adequate ventilation. The pilgrims have complained to the Field Service Group, an organization affiliated wit the Southeast Asian Pilgrims Institute.
The pilgrims say they don’t fault Saudi officials, but have asked the Ministry of Haj to help them find acceptable living conditions while they perform their pilgrimage.
“The basement is not set up for people to live there,” said Naseor. “The water pump doesn’t work and there’s no sewage disposal. There is also a huge pile of junk inside the basement-obviously this had been a storage facility of some kind before we got here.”
Aider Ahmed, another one of the pilgrims, said that the basement is also infested with cockroaches.
The Haj Ministry told local media that this residence is not licensed and said that the Indonesian Haj Delegation officials must find suitable accommodations.
Meanwhile, the catering crisis faced by 189,000 Indonesian Haj pilgrims has been settled with the assignment of the contract to a new organization after canceling the contract with the Mutawwif Organization for the South Asian Pilgrims.
Muhammad Nur Samad, consul for the Haj Affairs at the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah, told Arab News yesterday: “This move was made following the wide-scale complaints from the pilgrims that the meals supplied to them used to be very poor. Their complaints included insufficient quantities of the meals, lack of rice and meat, delay in getting foods and total lack of hygiene.”
Nur Samad said as the Indonesian government is keen on getting the best of services to its pilgrims it does not want the pilgrims to face any difficulty including their food and water.
The poor service meted out to the Indonesian pilgrims has been making such a public furor in that country that it was raised in the Indonesian Parliament last year.
Consequently, the Parliamentary Committee for Religious Affairs had agreed to take immediate steps to appoint another organization in the place of the existing one. The new organization guaranteed satisfactory services, the consul said.
He said that the new catering establishment would supply 16 meals to every pilgrim over the five days while the pilgrims will be camping in Arafat, Muzdalifa and Mina at the rate of SR250 per pilgrim. The total cost of the contract came to SR47.2 million, which is SR9 million less than the current contract.
Refuting the charges made by the Indonesians as grossly exaggerated, Ali Yasin, chairman of the board of directors of the Mutawwif Organization for South Asian Pilgrims, said the decision to cancel the contract would result in the loss of millions of riyals to his establishment and that the issue is currently under the consideration of Haj Minister Fouad Al-Farisy.
