They explained that the move was prompted by the success of similar punishments imposed for overstaying after the Umrah season.

The sources said Haj and Umrah companies would be obliged to increase the guarantee amount of SR200,000 they deposit in the name of the Haj Ministry in case any of their pilgrims fails to travel home after the performance of the rituals.

Sources of the National Haj and Umrah Committee (NHUC) of the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the fines on Umrah overstayers stirred havoc among Umrah companies when they were introduced a few years ago, but the companies had to succumb at the end of the day. “We are planning to apply the same measures on these companies for every pilgrim who remains in the Kingdom after the end of the Haj season,” a member of the committee said.

He explained that the experiment was first applied on Umrah pilgrims from a number of Arab, Asian and African countries whose citizens coming to the Kingdom for Umrah often prefer to stay on in the country illegally.

The sources said the problem of overstaying led to blacklisting about 30 local Umrah companies. They, however, said that the authorities were presently considering the possibility of allowing these companies to come back to work as local agents for foreign Umrah and Haj service providing companies.

Chairman of the NHUC Saad Al-Qurashi called for harsher punishments on both local and foreign Umrah and Haj companies as a step to put an end to the problem of overstaying.

“There are indications that these measures have greatly reduced the number of overstayers,” he said.

Meanwhile, Haj Minister Fouad Al-Farsy reportedly said there have been only 71 overstayers since the beginning of the present Umrah season, which started early February. He said this was a very low figure compared to the number of Umrah visas, which went up by more than 33 percent over the previous years.