JEDDAH, 30 October 2006 — Over 30,000 Egyptian pilgrims, on their way back to Egypt, have been left stranded for the last five days in the city of Ma’an on Jordan’s border with Saudi Arabia. According to reports, three Egyptian women have died at the location.
The dead were buried in the pilgrims’ cemetery in Ma’an while the situation of the stranded pilgrims still remains unsolved, Egyptian tour operators said to Arab News.
According to Dr. Ali Naqoor, executive president of the Al-Jazirah pilgrims transport company and head of the Transport Committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the problem is believed to have occurred because of an unexpected increase this year in the number of pilgrims opting to travel overland. Many pilgrims have chosen to travel by bus rather than the usual sea route because of the various ferry accidents that have occurred in recent years in the Red Sea.
He added that there was a shortage of buses in Egypt to pick up pilgrims from the Jordanian border because of an agreement signed between the Saudi and Egyptian authorities. The agreement allows only new buses to transport pilgrims.
Another reason for the problem, he said, is that the Egyptian authorities do not allow Saudi transport companies, which have the biggest fleet of buses in the Middle East, to carry the pilgrims all the way into Egypt. Saudi buses are only allowed to transport pilgrims to the Jordanian border after which Egyptian companies take over the responsibility of ferrying them.
Imad Suleman, a transport company operator, said that the new Saudi regulation demanding that only new buses can be used to transport pilgrims came too late. According to Suleman, Egyptian tour operators have not had enough time to upgrade their fleets.
Haj Barakat, manager of the Baron Travel Agency in Egypt, said in a telephone interview that all efforts to transport the stranded pilgrims have failed and the problem grew with an increasing number of overland pilgrims deciding to return home to spend Eid with their families.
According to statistics issued by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, more than 160,000 Egyptian pilgrims arrived in the Kingdom for Umrah this Ramadan. About 90 percent of them were middle and low income people who prefer to travel cheaply by land rather than flying to the Kingdom directly. The bus trip usually costs from SR1,500 to SR2,000 and includes accommodation and transport between Makkah and Madinah.
Meanwhile, Jordanian authorities say they have arranged transportation for around 120,000 Egyptian pilgrims stranded on the country’s border with Saudi Arabia.
“We have succeeded in ensuring the departure for home of 120,000 Egyptian Umrah performers,” Aqaba Governor Samir Mubaideen was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.
“The number of Egyptians who are still at Aqaba does not exceed 25,000 and all security authorities work around the clock to ensure their departure for home. ... This year witnessed a 200 percent rise in the number of Egyptian pilgrims who traveled through the Jordanian port,” he said.
— additional input by Abdul Jalil Mustafa in Amman
