By Akram Medhat
Mohamed Shaalan, first undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism and head of the tourist Hajj mission, stated that the crowding of a number of land Hajj buses at the pilgrims' village in the Al-Mudawwara area of Jordan last Saturday was due to the security procedures carried out by the Jordanian authorities to secure the buses.
Shaalan added that Minister of Tourism Yehia Rashed, as soon as he learned of the crisis, instructed the mission to intervene to solve the problem. The mission in turn contacted Egypt's consul in Jordan, who coordinated with the Jordanian authorities to divert the land Hajj companies' buses to the pilgrims' village in the Al-Rabiya area, which has suitable services for pilgrims, instead of the Al-Mudawwara area, which lacks services, explaining that the problem was solved the same day.
In a related context, Sobhi Abdel Fattah, Director General of Tourist Transport at the Ministry of Tourism and a member of the tourist Hajj mission in Medina, revealed that 250 buses out of a total of 313 have arrived on Egyptian soil, and that 63 buses are scheduled to arrive in the next few days.
Details of the Crisis: How It Began and How It Was Handled
It is worth mentioning that "Travel Yalla News" received a call from a supervisor at a tourism company organizing land Hajj at 8 a.m. last Saturday, complaining that about 150 buses carrying 6,000 pilgrims were stuck at a checkpoint in the Al-Mudawwara area of Jordan on the Saudi border, where they had remained for more than 6 hours. The area is not equipped with any services, leaving pilgrims, including the elderly, to sit on the ground and sleep in the open to rest from the hardship of long hours of travel, and it lacks even toilets as a minimum of public services, which worsened the crisis.
The website immediately contacted Minister of Tourism Yehia Rashed to intervene to solve the problem, so as not to stir up the crisis in the media, which would cause confusion and worry among the pilgrims' families in Egypt. The minister responded by contacting the Hajj mission and through diplomatic contacts, saying the problem would be solved immediately. The complaint was also sent to a member of the tourist Hajj mission in Saudi Arabia to follow up on the situation, and the mission members showed keen interest in quickly contacting the supervisors of these pilgrims and finding out the situation in order to solve the problem quickly.
