JEDDAH: More than 1,000 new buses have been added to the fleet of buses for the pilgrim transportation during the upcoming Haj season.
“The General Cars Syndicate (GCS), which is made up of 16 transport companies, spent SR800 million to buy new vehicles. They started the upgrading process at the end of last pilgrimage season,” Muhammad Zakaria Al-Jawaharji, acting president of the GCS, told Arab News yesterday.
The GCS has made contractual agreements with 66 Haj delegations from various countries to transport about 1.5 million pilgrims in 18,700 buses, he added.
The syndicate will shortly develop a multilingual website on the Internet that will include English, French and Arabic in its first phase and gradually most other languages, the official said.
Commenting on the expansion of the fleet, Ali Nagor, chairman of the Transport Committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the enhanced fleet would enable the syndicate to offer better services this year.
Nagor, who is also the executive president of Al-Jazirah Transport Co., said his company bought 200 new luxury buses at a total cost of SR160 million.
and planned to buy 300 more over the next two years.
In another development, the Jeddah Court of Grievances ordered the Ministry of Haj to grant Haj service licenses to companies that fulfilled the conditions laid down by the ministry.
The court issued the verdict in a case filed by several companies against the ministry two years ago.
The court, however, upheld the ministry’s decision not to renew the licenses of companies that neglected the ministry’s terms and conditions.
