DHAKA: Tens of thousands of Hajj pilgrims arriving at Bangladesh’s main international airport for flights to Saudi Arabia are being eased through the immigration process by officials from the Kingdom.
The meet and greet service being laid on at Shah Jalal International Airport in the capital Dhaka is aimed at offering help and advice to worshippers heading for Makkah, while streamlining documentation procedures.
Bangladesh is among five Muslim majority countries — including Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Morocco — where Saudi Arabia is operating its Makkah Route initiative.
The program, launched in 2019, is dedicated to Hajj pilgrims, allowing them to fulfill all visa, customs, and health requirements in one place, at the airport of origin, and save long hours of waiting before and upon reaching the Kingdom having had already gone through the process at home.
FASTFACT
60k
Bangladeshi pilgrims will perform the Hajj this year.
“It’s a new thing that opened a new horizon and our heartiest gratefulness to the Saudi authorities,” Dhaka Hajj office director Saiful Islam told Arab News earlier this week.
“Altogether, 60,000 pilgrims will be able to travel from Bangladesh.”
The number is half the quota Bangladesh received in 2019, the last Hajj season before the coronavirus pandemic, but so is the total of pilgrims who will arrive in the Kingdom this year.
The annual pilgrimage was restricted to only 1,000 people living in Saudi Arabia in 2020 and limited to 60,000 domestic participants in 2021.
As COVID-19 curbs have been lifted this year, Saudi Arabia will welcome 1 million foreign and domestic pilgrims, compared with the pre-pandemic 2.5 million. Those departing from Dhaka airport are being taken care of by 50 Saudi officials working round the clock to facilitate their pre-immigration.
One of them, Mohammed Mozammel Huq, had been dreaming about Hajj since he saw his father embarking on the pilgrimage decades ago. “It was my lifelong dream to perform the Hajj. We are very happy with the Hajj management system,” he said, adding that his journey had so far been “very smooth.”
Businessman Yahia Helal said pilgrims seemed to be satisfied with how their departures had been managed.
“We have completed the immigration formalities in a very easy process,” he told Arab News. “Saudi immigration part is also done in a short span of time.”
Rokeya Khatun Lata, a homemaker, also noted the speed of the process.
“In Makkah Route initiative, it took me less than 30 minutes to complete the immigration process,” she said. “I am feeling very happy from the very outset of the journey.”
