Charitable societies across the Kingdom worked Wednesday to distribute Zakat Al-Fitr among deserving people before Eid prayer Thursday morning.
Al-Bir Charitable Society said more than 30,000 families and individuals had authorized it to pay the Zakat on behalf of them.
“We have adopted an automatic system to calculate the amount of rice required by a poor family,” said Walid Bahamdan, secretary of the society.
He said the charity had taken steps to distribute the Zakat one or two days before the Eid, soon after receiving the money from potential donors.
“More than 30,000 poor families have been registered with the charity,” Al-Madinah Arabic daily quoted him as saying.
Muhammad Qaed, director of Al-Bir in Makkah, said they would not receive Zakat Al-Fitr in cash but in kind, in the form of rice.
“We don’t have a system to collect Zakat in the form of money and then purchase rice to distribute it among the needy,” he said.
Qaed said the charity receives more than 3,000 small bags of rice in the night before the Eid for distribution among the poor.
“We look after more than 250 poor families.”
Faisal Al-Humaid, director general of Charitable Warehouse in Jeddah, said his charity has a database of poor people living in the city and the Zakat is distributed among them before the Eid prayer with the support of a network of distributors.
He said the charity has recruited 450 young Saudis to distribute Zakat Al-Fitr. “We have set up 300 outlets across the city to collect and distribute the Zakat,” he added.
Charities play big role in Zakat distribution
