RIYADH: About 200 mostly elderly Indonesian pilgrims passed away during their Haj pilgrimages, jolting the Indonesian officials once again to find out solution to an ever-increasing number of deaths reported every year especially among Indonesian pilgrims. The final death count has yet to be determined. The death toll is likely to increase once a final accounting has taken place. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, sent 208,000 Muslims to perform Haj this year.
“The deaths were mainly related to heart disease, respiratory failures, liver failure, hypertension, heart attacks and suffocation because of crowds and congestion with most of the deaths (being persons) aged above 55 years old,” said Budiarto Kurniawan, the spokesman of the Indonesian Embassy.
In order to solve the problems of overcrowding and congestion, the Indonesian government has signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia to construct an apartment block near the Grand Mosque in Makkah for its pilgrims. This new step is part of an effort to solve the accommodation problems that have plagued worshippers in the last few years, said another Indonesian official. He said that the construction of the news apartment would be completed by 2012.
This new apartment is expected to be able to host up to 100,000 Indonesian pilgrims. The new apartment will be located 1.8 kilometers from the Grand Mosque, which will be of great help for elderly pilgrims. It has been estimated that 35 percent of this year’s 208,000 Indonesian pilgrims were over the age of 65 or had serious illnesses.
Referring to the reasons of deaths of a large number of Indonesian pilgrims, a report said: “One of the issues was unsuitable accommodation, for instance there was only one bathroom for 25 pilgrims to use.”
The report said that an elderly pilgrim could not hold his bladder any longer due to a long queue for the bathroom. Some of the elderly pilgrims were not mentally fit to participate in the pilgrimage. The report said that there were at least seven pilgrims who were more than 70 years old that had serious health conditions.
M. Arwam Thomafi, a member of the Indonesian Haj monitoring team, has been quoted in the report as saying that the team witnessed overcrowding in the respective dormitories due to lack of space.
The team also found that most of the dormitories were located on the outer ring of the Kaaba. Only 37 percent of the dormitories were located on the inner ring road of the Grand Mosque in Makkah. These findings contradict the original design and regulations that stipulate that 75 percent of pilgrim dormitories must be located near the Grand Mosque, said the report.
Only 15 percent of the Indonesian pilgrims stayed at locations within one kilometer of the Grand Mosque this year. The remaining 85 percent had to stay in accommodation over 10 kilometers from the mosque, causing a lot of inconvenience to the pilgrims. Jakarta, on other hand, has been taking many other measures to facilitate Haj next year. It has also set up a new health center that would serve Indonesian pilgrims every year now onward.
