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The Hajj Pilgrimage is an important religious assignment for Ghanaian Muslims at home and abroad each of them obsessed with performing this spiritual obligation.
Over the years, Ghanaian pilgrims have saved towards the annual Hajj paying through the Ghana Hajj Board whose management of the rather complex operation has witnessed improvements.
With the change in government this year the leadership of Hajj management was altered, a Hajj Taskforce put in place to carry out the assignment.
One of the first actions of the taskforce was to announce a reduced cost of the Hajj package from GHC75,000 reduction which brought joy to many.
The writer observed that the taskforce had government pre-finance the operation through bank facilities. This was meant for the payment of an assortment of services provided for pilgrims in Saudi Arabia.
The Ghana Hajj task force this presupposes will pay back the loan with an undisclosed interest.
The taskforce by this arrangement was able to contain 60% of people who did not make any financial commitments towards the Holy journey generally known as protocol pilgrims when paid Pilgrims who paid their fares to their respective accredited Hajj agents were denied Visas.
CANCELLATION OF VISAS
Prior to the start of the airlift of Ghanaian Pilgrims in Tamale, the Ghana Hajj task force under pressure from paid-up prospective pilgrims started cancelling confirmed visas of protocol pilgrims.
The cancellation of visas because of the aforementioned pressure and the presentation of fresh visa applications led to eleven returned to Ghana from Madina in Saudi Arabia.
Those who couldn’t obtain Hajj Visas though made full payments to the Hajj task force are stranded at the Hajj village in Accra. Social media reports indicate that some of the disappointed paid-up prospective pilgrims fainted from shock and others enduring risen blood pressure.
In Madina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Ghanaian Pilgrims through social media platforms and personal complaints to their families back home have expressed their dissatisfaction about the services being rendered by the taskforce.
” We are really suffering here in terms of late arrival of food and poor quality of accommodation here. o What they normally show on their page is just one or two of the nice hotels just to deceive Ghanaians but where majority of us live are not good” a Pilgrim said.
Excerpts of an audio recording by one of the Pilgrims to his son in a Ghanaian language said
” Right now we here cannot make public what we are seeing because of the stern warnings and threat some of the members of the task force are issuing to us. One young Pilgrim was shouted at by one of them ( task force) after he complained about the lack of water in the washroom of their room”.
These and many of such complaints daily come from the Ghanaian Pilgrims in Madina and Mecca and yet the Hajj task force has preferred to be on a defensive mode.
The question being posed by observers in the Islamic community is why the task force abandoned the hotels which Ghanaian pilgrims have gotten used to under the previous managers of the Hajj. Under the previous order the facilities were close to each other a situation which enabled family members to be touch with each other.
The situation today where our pilgrims are no longer close to Haram is inappropriate.
The corporate affairs department of the Hajj task force has tried explaining some of these lapses through propaganda without admitting to the facts on the ground.
Families of Pilgrims who have paid the discounted Hajj Fare but could not get visas are up in ‘arms’ with their Hajj agents majority of who are already in Mecca and Madina. The head of corporate Affairs of the task force Alhaji A.B Fusheini addressing journalists in Accra announced the refund of monies to prospective pilgrims who couldn’t obtain Visas. The last flight is scheduled for May 28, which will include protocol pilgrims while paid-up will have their monies refunded to them.
The understanding of a successful operations of Hajj in Ghana or any place in the world does not fall on cheap Hajj fare to satisfy prospective pilgrims but rather the quality of the components of Hajj services which includes flights, accommodation, Masha’ir ( Mina, Muzdalifah and Arafah), transportation, food, medications and others.
Even with the reduction of the Hajj Fare, more people have used the unapproved ( tourist and visiting Visas) route to Hajj than when Ghanaians thought the Hajj Fare was high.
Even with the reduced Hajj Fare, there is no sufficient medical consumables for the Ghana Hajj medical team in Saudi Arabia. This revelation by one of the team members during a live broadcast upon the arrival of Ghanaian pilgrims in Madina was quickly deleted from the Facebook page of the Pilgrims affairs office of Ghana but not before many Ghanaians took screenshot of it.
Ghanaian Muslims are calling on all stakeholders especially political actors to depoliticize Hajj operations in Ghana.
By Tanko Mohammed Rabiu, Senior Independent Hajj Reporter
