JEDDAH, 4 January 2004 — Saudi investors are planning a SR6 billion project to help accommodate a quarter of a million more pilgrims in Mina by setting up some 200 tents in the surrounding mountains.
“Some 200 tents, each with a capacity to house 150 to 2,000 pilgrims will be constructed under the Mina project,” Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, quoted Abdul Majeed Al-Jeraisy, chairman of the National Haj Committee, as saying.
Representatives of some 270 companies working in the sector discussed the project with Haj Minister Iyad Madani during a meeting here recently.
Al-Jeraisy said the investors were awaiting official approval. The government has already constructed some 44,000 air-conditioned and fireproof canvas tents in the plain of Mina.
Plans are under way to expand camping areas in the holy sites to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims, which is estimated to reach 3.8 million by the end of the current Five-Year Development Plan (2000/2005).
The ministry puts a limit on the number of pilgrims coming for Haj from within the Kingdom and abroad. Under a quota system introduced in the 1980s, each country is allowed to send only a fixed number of pilgrims based on its total Muslim population, at 1,000 pilgrims for every one million Muslims.
The Ministry of Public Works and Housing, which carried out the Mina tent project, had said that it plans to increase the camping area to more than 2.2 million sq. m. by the end of the development plan. This would represent 37 percent of the total area of Mina, which measures six million sq. m.
The high-tech fiberglass Teflon-coated shelters are equipped with sprinklers, air coolers and fire extinguishers. The project was implemented in three phases at a cost of SR2.4 billion.
