RIYADH, 14 March 2003 — The Ministry of Haj will be a complete e-ministry within six months.
The conversion will make it web-enabled to provide all Haj and Umrah-related services besides providing interface with various government organizations.
This was disclosed by Deputy Minister for Haj and Umrah Affairs Dr. Muhammad Saad Benton at a seminar on the Haj ministry’s e-governance program to streamline pilgrim services via the Internet. The ministry will build its own website, www.Yahaj.net.sa, which will go online within six months.
The seminar was organized by Cisco Systems. Dr. Benton explained how the deployment of e-business technology based on Cisco System’s infrastructure has helped to give a push to the concept of e-governance.
Dr. Benton said that as part of the e-government plan under the second phase, the Haj Ministry is setting up a one-stop portal for facilitating interaction between various organizations in the ministry. There will also be links to websites of various ministries, such as the Ministries of Interior, Health, Commerce and Communications as well as the Supreme Commission for Tourism.
Dr. Benton said his ministry had set up two consortia of seven national and four international companies for providing Haj and Umrah services via the Internet. This would enable prospective pilgrims to go through Haj and Umrah service providers online, besides obtaining visa through them. The network also includes travel agents, hoteliers and Tawafa organizations. He said a total of over 4.2 million visas were issued during the last two years — over 2.4 million last year and 1.8 million the year before.
Besides obtaining visas online, prospective pilgrims could also do e-shopping and have products home-delivered. Haj revenues, which stood at SR7 billion last year, were expected to increase to around SR20 billion over the next 10 years.
Another online service provided by the ministry was the handling of pilgrims’ inquiries. Such a service had become necessary as there were 30 million Muslim users of the Internet, while an even greater number of non-Muslims were showing interest in Islam, he added.
