LAHORE- The All Pakistan Anjuman-e-Tajiran, while appreciating the National Assembly standing committee on religious affairs for unearthing scandal in allocation of Haj quota in violation of Haj Policy, has asked the government to cancel whole quota of private Hajj operators, who are looting the poor public in the name of faith.
The APAT also appreciated the decision of considering to accept 2,500 more applications for Hajj under official quota. It is appreciable that that ministry has decided to increase the quota to facilitate the lower strata of society and small vendors, who cannot afford huge expenses of private Hajj operators but the authorities should also include those applications which were submitted few minutes early of official banking hours but accepted by the automated system of the ministry, APAT president Khalid Pervaiz said. He said that ministry has declared some applications unsuccessful on the pretext that those were received before bank hours. It is pertinent to mention that at 08.46am the data of 32,000 applicants could be seen on Ministry’s data base, implying that thousands of application were received by that time. So, the applications received after this time should also be considered as per the merit.
All Pakistan Anjuman-e-Tajiran leader said that a large number of complaints by the traders have been lodged against the Haj office of ministry of religious affairs, who are not accepting their applications without gratification or commission.
He asked the government to facilitate small traders and general public by increasing size of the government Haj quota from the present level of 56,000, reducing the volume of private Haj quota drastically, as they are charging almost double from the intending pilgrims. The government is presently charging about 300,000 for Haj while private Hajj operators demanding in the range of Rs600,000 to Rs2.5 million in different packages which is not affordable for small traders or a poor man.