270 Pilgrims yet to secure visas for Mecca
Two hundred and seventy more prospective Muslims are yet to secure visas from the Saudi Embassy to embark on this year’s pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj).
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Scores of the pilgrims have expressed anxiety over the delay in the issuance of their visas but the Chairman of the Ghana Pilgrims Affairs Office, formerly the Hajj Board, Alhaji Ibrahim Rauf Tanko, urged them to remain calm as the office was working hard to secure their visas.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra last Monday on the current state of affairs, he said there had been a backlog of pilgrims from last year’s Hajj which had to be cleared thereby exerting pressure on this year’s quota.
He explained that the delay in releasing the 270 passports from the Saudi Embassy was due to technical challenges and appealed for calm among pilgrims and families.
Success story
Touching on success so far on this year’s Hajj, Alhaji Tanko said in 2016 and consistent with the commitment to make every Hajj year much better than the previous one, the Ghana Pilgrims Affairs Office, with the support from the Office of the President, for the first time in the history of Hajj, made it possible to fly some pilgrims from the Tamale Airport.
He stated that the arrangement was successful and for which reason pilgrims, Hajj agents, Muslims and the entire public could not help but commend the efforts of the Ghana Pilgrims Affairs Office.
“Beyond the Tamale success, the Pilgrims Office, with the cooperation of prospective pilgrims and the entire Muslim population, has also ensured smooth departure of six other flights from Accra to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as of Monday morning,” he said.
When asked about the secret behind this year’s success, the chairman remarked “there is no special secret except the grace of God, cooperation of all Muslims and in fact, the unconditional support of the Office of the President”.
He added that the pilgrimage to Mecca was a religious injunction and therefore could cause people to get emotive sometimes, especially when they did not understand a particular situation well.
For Alhaji Tanko, in such circumstances, the tools of humility, patience, understanding and information sharing were to be deployed to resolve issues and expressed the belief that those virtues really played a key part in the success of this year’s Hajj.
Challenges
On some of the challenges his office faced in the organisation of the 2016 Hajj, the chairman alluded to delayed payment which he described as an annual ritual that caused the Hajj processes to delay by over two weeks.
The net effect, he posited, was delay in the issuance of visas which in most cases led to a situation where prospective pilgrims paid money to agents at a time the quota was exhausted, thus making it practically impossible to obtain visas.
Caution against fraud
Alhaji Tanko stressed that in desperation to embark on the Hajj, some unscrupulous individuals were taking advantage of the situation by defrauding unsuspecting pilgrims and called on all aspiring pilgrims to desist from giving monies to people who promised to secure visas for them through other means.
He expressed regret that his office had been inundated with cases of reported fraud in visa-related issues.
He, however, assured Ghanaians that there was still one more flight from Ghana and added that a special arrangement was in place for a flight to come through Senegal to transport pilgrims who for one reason or the other missed their flights.
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