JEDDAH, 3 February 2004 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd yesterday ordered massive development plans for Makkah, Madinah and other holy sites in order to meet both present and future needs. The king issued a royal decree announcing a 20-year plan to be carried out by a commission chaired by Municipal and Rural Affairs Minister Prince Miteb, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Makkah Governor Prince Abdul Majeed, Madinah Governor Prince Muqrin and Haj Minister Iyad Madani will sit on the commission which will work out the development plan. They can call on expertise from abroad as well as within the Kingdom.
The new body will benefit from a special budget, the decree said, without specifying any figure. “The commission will set out a comprehensive plan for the development of Makkah and Madinah and other holy sites within a period of not less than 20 years,” the agency said, quoting the royal decree. “The commission will present its proposals to help the authorities take necessary action,” it said.
The king took the decision on the recommendation of Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard. The royal decree came a day after 251 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede at the Jamrat in Mina on the third day of this year’s pilgrimage. Some 240 others were injured.
Officials had earlier revealed plans to expand the Jamrat to hold three million pilgrims. Brig. Mansour Al-Turki, director of Haj affairs, said there are plans to construct a network of tunnels under the Jamrat area to facilitate traffic and pedestrian movement. A four-level bridge will be built to help pilgrims perform the stoning ritual in ease.
At the Jamrat pilgrims stone pillars representing the devil for four consecutive days.
Madani told a post-stampede press conference on Sunday, “All the infrastructure and all the deployment preparations could not prevent the will of God.” But he added that the Kingdom would revise the organization of the pilgrimage and improve the services offered to the guests of God.
Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, the Kingdom’s grand mufti, also promised measures to prevent stampedes at the Jamrat. “The Council of Senior Islamic Scholars is grieved by the incident and continues to search for all means that can prevent such occurrences. It will meet on Thursday in Makkah to issue a decisive statement to solve this problem, God willing,” the mufti said in a statement carried by SPA.
Several major schemes are under way to improve the holy city of Makkah. The Makkah Development Plan, to be completed over several years, will enable the area to accommodate more people. The plan also envisages an increase in car-parking capacity to 45,000 vehicles and expanding the pedestrian area from 6,000 square meters to 120,000 square meters. Traditional souks around the Grand Mosque are today scattered over an area of 180,000 square meters. Ultra-modern malls and markets are planned to cover 660,000 square meters.
The plan envisages 40 side roads all leading to the mosque, in addition to pedestrian tunnels under main streets to facilitate the movement of worshipers. There are no gardens around the mosque at present but more than 30,000 square meters of parks are planned which will be planted with thousands of trees.
One of the major projects is the SR6 billion ($1.6-billion) development plan for Jabal Omar, overlooking the mosque. To do so, several hundred old buildings will be demolished.
Some 120 residential towers, each 20 stories high, with a total capacity of 100,000 people, will be built on the mountainous area. In another scheme a multi-tower residential and shopping center will rise from the site of the old Ajyad Hospital.
located on the very edge of the mosque. A modern hospital will also be built as part of the center.
Since King Fahd came to the throne in 1982, the Saudi government has spent more than SR100 billion (about $27 billion) to carry out massive expansions of the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah. The expansion projects have in recent years allowed two million faithful to gather at the Grand Mosque and a million to pray at the Prophet’s Mosque.
