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Hajj At Mecca

Pakistan Minster for Religious Affairs

ISLAMABAD, Dec 11 (APP): The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has directed the Ministry of Religious Affairs to summon its Assistant Accounts Officer deployed at Jeddah for questioning in the continuing probe into alleged corruption in Hajj arrangements. The accounts officer Samiullah was member of the committee, which hired residential buildings in Saudi Arabia for around 80,000 Pakistani pilgrims who performed Hajj under the government scheme, reliable sources in the ministry requesting anonymity told APP here on Saturday.
Ex-Director General Rao Shakeel Ahmed and Joint Secretary (Hajj) Aftab-ul-Islam Raja are already in custody of FIA over their alleged involvement in malpractices in acquiring residential buildings.
A nine-member FIA team headed by its Director General Waseem Ahmad had on Friday questioned Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi over the corruption case in the Hajj ministry.
A parliamentary hiring review committee after visiting Saudi Arabia had submitted a report before the National Assembly and Senate Standing Committees on Religious Affairs and exposed massive corruption in the process of acquiring buildings for pilgrims who performed Hajj this year.
The committee in its report had mentioned most of the hired housing units were sub-standard and in sheer violation of the set criteria.
Last year, a parliamentary committee led by Parliamentary Secretary for Religious Affairs Mehboobullah Jan had submitted a 10-page report before the ministry suggesting key improvements in arrangements for intending pilgrims to Makkah from Pakistan but their proposals were ignored.
The important document was compiled by a five-member committee after a visit to Saudi Arabia where the parliamentarians made on-the-spot inspection of 2009 Hajj arrangements and held intensive discussions with all relevant quarters.
The entire exercise and the money spent on it was wasted because the report was kept under wraps in the ministry and no action was taken to implement it.
Talk of streamlining Hajj arrangements aside, if useful proposals of the parliamentary committee were implemented the difficulties of the pilgrims could have been avoided.
“Comparisons were also drawn between the facilities provided to the committee delegation and the ordinary pilgrims paying same rent to the Hajj Mission. We found irregularities which clearly indicated corruption worth billions of rupees in procurement of accommodation,” Mehboobullah had said while releasing the report to media last year.