Dr. Enayet Karim from Saudi Arabia’s Medina:

The author

Though, rumour spread online and offline a few days back that, the government of Saudi Arabia had not been issuing Umrah visas for Bangladeshi pilgrims due to a worsening relation between the country, the reality is that the accommodation crisis in the two holy cities-Makkah and Madina, also the Middle-East county forced the authority to suspend it temporarily to address the problem.

The doubled number of people has gathered in two main cities Makkah and Madina compared to accommodation capacity as a huge number of people from several parts of the world gathered there for performing Umrah in Ramada. It is worth mentioning that as per Hadith, “Performing Umrah in Ramadan mean performing Hajj with prophet Muhammad (SM).”

Though there is a capacity of about 50 lakh devotees, currently more than one crore people are staying there.

Due to accommodation crisis, the issuance of visa was kept stooped by the Saudi government so that the crowd is not increased further, taking the advantage, local businesses increased prices of services, including hotel and  restaurants, and even the train fares.

Asked an official at a rail station in Madina about train ticket, the official replied that train ticket is not available today (yesterday), you (Enayet Karim) may get the ticket for tomorrow morning or night by paying almost double fares.

It seems that a business tendency grew among the locals after the unusual situation created in the holy cities.

Thousands of people were seen sleeping on corridors of hotels, restaurants, Masjid al-Haram, roadsides, under shades due to lack of accommodation at hotels and restaurants,

Food supply, movement, sanitation system have collapsed in Makkah and Madina which had not happen ever.

The matter of reducing Umrah visa is completely a matter of the Saudi government. Probably, the number of pilgrims was reduced to lessen the additional pressure of Umrah pilgrims and arranging the accommodation of extra pilgrims at Makkah and Madina.

Due to the new quota system of the Saudi authorities, more than 90 per cent of the enrolled Umrah pilgrims from Bangladesh and Pakistan are not getting visa from the Nusuk system of the country. As a result, number of visa clearance from Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has also reduced significantly.

According to the pilgrims and Hajj and Umrah agencies, the Nusuk system of the Saudi government, which is used for enrollment for Hajj and Umrah, has cut around 90 per cent of the Umrah quota. Due to the deduction, more than 500 Bangladeshi pilgrims are being deprived of travelling to Saudi Arabia everyday for Umrah.

Their air tickets are being cancelled, but the ticketing agencies are not giving their money back for the cancelled tickets.

In this situation, the Umrah pilgrims who were expecting to join the I’tikaf, an Islamic practice of staying in a mosque for a set number of days to worship and get closer to Allah. Same time, they are losing huge amount of money as the Umrah tickets for Bangladeshis are booked until April this year.

If the situation is not changed, several thousands of pilgrims would be deprived of performing Umrah from Muslim majority countries including Bangladesh and the monetary loss of the pilgrims and agencies would exceed Tk 22,500 crore this year.