The City of Makkah
Whenever I intend to write on Hajj and Umrah related subjects
on this page, I get perplexed concerning what information to pass and what to
keep for some other purpose. There is this fear of being an unpaid consultant
of sort to non-professionals who think they can go into Hajj and Umrah business
by just copying what serious professionals in the industry are doing. When my company returned from a
successful Summer Umrah and Saudi tour in April this year, I intended to write
on our experiences in travelling with, hitherto, the largest number of
contingent, mostly children, but I rescinded that decision for the above
reasons.
You cannot buy experience in this industry or in any other;
you have to acquire it through yearly participation in the pilgrimage, by
offering decent services to Allah’s guests, persistence in fulfilling your
promises to pilgrims even in the face of evident loss, hard work, etc. A
sedentary visa-trafficker, a lazy plagiarist has no room in modern Hajj and
Umrah service delivery industry!
Whenever you get your Umrah or Hajj visa it is marked “Free”
from the Saudi Arabian Embassy or Consulate. The question that I want to
address today is how free is that “free visa”?
Each Umrah company around the world has to sign contract with
a Saudi Arabian Umrah operator, a company licensed by the Saudi Ministry of
Hajj to provide services to Umrah pilgrims. The ratification of this contract
entails a bank guarantee of SAR100, 000 (N4, 500, 000) or, for some
companies, SAR2000, 000 (N9, 000, 000). Often times, this value of the
guarantee is lost due to over-stayers of the Umrah visa; people who will travel
to Saudia for Umrah only to disappear into thin air or hide within Makkah until
they perform Hajj or even remain for as long as they can evade the immigration
police, becoming a source of embarrassment for Nigeria; the tour operator bears
the brunt. Furthermore, this guarantee attracts charges against the tour
operator for the duration of its validity, for the period of one year of the
Umrah season. Some banks in Nigeria will insist on issuing the guarantee in US
dollars, and effect the bank charges in the same currency. Also, the Umrah
contract involves travel by the serious tour operator, to Saudi Arabia for
physical inspection of places of accommodation for pilgrims in Makkah and
Madeenah, in order to assess the distance of hotels to the Two Holy Mosques,
and making payment for accommodation, transport, and, where applicable,
feeding. In addition to this, the Saudi partner will charge the foreign company,
(any tour operator outside Saudia), a certain amount of money ranging from $100
and above for logistics in the visa process and airport meet and greet during
pilgrims’ arrival at Jeddah or Madeenah international airports. The Saudi partner
actually makes e-payment of certain amount of money to the Saudi Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to get an online number (called MOFA number) for Umrah
companies outside the Kingdom to use for final upload of visa request, through the ministry’s website, and
submission to the Saudi Embassy.
To arrive at the cost of the Umrah package, which includes
the visa, the tour operator has to put all the above into consideration, his
own overhead and profit margin. Therefore, no Umrah visa is free. Yes, the
Saudi Embassy or Consulate can stamp ‘Free’ on the visa because there is
no payment you make to the embassy in Nigeria, but a lot of money has been
expended before this ‘Free’ visa was issued including what the Saudi partner
paid directly to the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I can say the same
thing and more concerning the Hajj visa; it is only free at the embassy level
as stamped on the passport.
VISA ONLY
There is nothing like ‘visa only’ in the parlance of
Hajj and Umrah operations. The phrase is a euphemism for arranging your Umrah
visa with attached accommodation so poor you cannot use it. Instead of signing
for decent accommodation, most operators go for the cheapest, remotest from
Haram, no star apartments, where they know many pilgrims cannot stay;
yours truly has been forced to patronise these in the past before signing my
company’s own Umrah contract with a reputable company in Saudia.
The same thing applies to Jeddah-Makkah-Madeenah transport.
They sign for old 49-seater buses for transporting pilgrims. When a pilgrim
arrives at Jeddah airport, after all the trouble he goes through during
screening, stamping of passport, seizure and photocopying of the passport by
the Saudi agent, etc. the pilgrim will have to wait for 48 other pilgrims whose
time of arrival may be from that time until Allah knows when, before he departs
for Madeenah or Makkah as the case may
be in a stuffy old bus. So, rather than to go through this uncertainty, the
pilgrim has no choice but to accept the ‘visa only’ option and forfeit the
purported accommodation and transportation attached to the visa. He pays for
the ‘visa only’ from around N100, 000 to N160, 000, and even more (subject to
the period of travel), secures accommodation on a separate arrangement, and
arranges for his transport within Saudi Arabia. Of course there are those who
see things in a different light; they say Umrah is worship and they do not mind
the hassles. These forget that Allah has not attached those hassles to the
worship; they are man-made. I understand if all you can afford is this kind of
visa, accommodation and transport, just do not tell me this is part of the ‘ibaadah.
People have now become so used to this charade of visa only
arrangement that it has become the norm for Umrah pilgrimage.
LIMITED VISAS FOR UMRAH
The Saudi Ministry of Hajj has decided to reduce the number
of Umrah pilgrims coming from outside the Kingdom during Sha’abaan and the
holy month of Ramadan and allowed 14 days for such pilgrims to leave the
Kingdom after performing Umrah rituals. The decision was attributed to the
expansion project being implemented in the Grand Mosque in Makkah. The period
of this restriction of number of pilgrims is not confined to Ramadan; it covers
Hajj, hence the slashing of Hajj slots not only for Nigeria but for all
countries all over the world. This
reduction means great loss to tour operators around the world who have signed
contracts with their Saudi partners for rooms in proportion to the number of
pilgrims they normally serve during these seasons.
As I write this piece the visa quota to Umrah companies for pilgrims
coming in the months of Sha’baan and Ramadan has been reduced
from the online electronic platform where we process such visas. Prior to this
reduction we could process a group of 20 and more pilgrims to get the online
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) number. Now, all agents are restricted to
only 5 in a day. Unless this is changed, many families travelling in Ramadan
may not be able to undertake the journey especially where they have a limited
number of mahrams. Each group of four female pilgrims or underage children must
be attached to a mahram during the online request for MOFA number which will be
used to generate the E-MOFA number (slang for the alphanumeric code generated from
the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs website upon successful uploading of a
pilgrim’s details) for onward submission to, and issuance of the visa by the
embassy. You cannot split a group of 6 which has only one mahram, for instance;
so, the law as it is now will impede the Ramadan Umrah of many families.
Moreover, not all tour operators have Umrah contracts to
issue visa. If your passport is with an agent who does not have licence issued
by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) to conduct Umrah and who
cannot issue visa with a valid contract from a Saudi partner not to mention
opening a file with the Saudi embassy or consulate, you are on your own because
at the end of the day that agent will not be able to get you the visa due to
the shortage of allocation for the company he intends to use. You will not know
this until when it is too late.
The validity of the Umrah visa is also restricted to only 15
days with a duration of stay ranging from 15 to 30 days- depending on your
luck, really. This means your request for Umrah visa should not be made until
you are ready to travel within 14 days of the issuance date of the visa,
otherwise its validity will expire. Those who think they have their Umrah visa
for Ramadan from now should know that they are in possession of expired travel
documents; unless the Saudi government reverses the current policy which came
into effect less than two weeks ago. In such a case, the airline may not carry
you, and if you are lucky to reach Jeddah or Madeenah, you will be denied entry
with an expired visa. The validity of such visas used to be 1 month; not
anymore! At least until the expansion project of the Ka’bah is finished in the
next 3 years.
Intending Umrah pilgrims must be careful concerning the
validity of visa before travel, and the duration of your stay in Saudi Arabia
after your arrival. Anyway, Umrah visa is not free.