RI expects Saudis to reinstate regular haj quota next year

Jakarta, NU Online
The government said here recently that it would fight for an increase in the country’s haj quota for next year to prevent people falsifying immigration documents to use the quotas of other countries.

Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin said Indonesia’s haj quota might be returned to 211,000 people next year, the level it was at before 2013 when the Saudi government slashed the country’s quota by 20 percent due to renovations at the Al-Haram Grand Mosque in Mecca.

“We will persuade the Saudi government to reconsider the current quota because it is no longer in proportion with the total Muslim population in Indonesia,” Lukman was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying. “Many of our citizens must wait for years to be able to complete the haj due to the very limited quota.”

Lukman said he was confident Indonesia could secure a larger quota for next year as when he visited Mecca during a recent haj, he found that renovations of the Al-Haram Grand Mosque had been completed.

“We assume that they have finished the Al-Haram Grand Mosque renovations so they have no more reason to slash the quota. So, in 2017, we hope we can have the quota back to normal,” Lukman added.

He made the statement to reporters after a meeting with the House of Representatives to evaluate this year’s haj organization.

The minister is also trying to communicate with the Saudi government and other countries about whether it is possible to transfer unused haj quota places from other countries to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

In a recent scandal, 177 Indonesians were arrested in Manila for attempting to depart for the haj using unused places in the Philippine’s haj quota with falsified immigration documents. They used the services of bogus travel agents working with syndicates in Manila to obtain haj visas from the country.

At a recent G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo asked Saudi Arabian Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman about the possibility of Indonesia securing unused haj quota places of other countries or obtaining a larger haj quota.

But any decision or conclusion about the quota has yet to be made.

House Speaker Ade Komarudin is set to make a diplomatic visit to Saudi Arabia before December to lobby the Saudi government to increase the quota.

“We will take a parliamentary approach and persuade the Saudi government to accept the quota increase. We will also have trilateral meetings with some countries with unused haj quota places to inquire as to whether we may take [part of] their quota,” Ade said.

 After the evaluation meeting, Ade also praised the Religious Affairs Ministry for a this year’s haj that, in terms of transportation, accommodation and catering, was better organized than last year.

However, Ade asked the ministry to improve the quality of tents used by pilgrims in Arafah, because many of them were inadequate. “I will invite some banks that manage haj funds to contribute to the tents through their CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] programs,” Ade said. (Masdar)