On Tuesday August 27, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly revoked the licences of 36 Egyptian journey firms for illegally offering Egyptian Hajj (pilgrim) with a Saudi vacationer visa, reasonably than the required Hajj allow.
In June of 2024, over 600 Egyptian pilgrims handed away throughout Hajj. They constituted a disproportionately massive portion of the 1,300 pilgrims deceased in complete. Most deaths have been brought on by warmth exhaustion and warmth strokes, as temperatures reached 51 celsius.
The Saudi authorities famous roughly 83% of the deceased travelled with out the required Hajj allow. Pilgrims with out the allow have been denied entry to important providers corresponding to air-conditioned tents, transportation, misting centres, and water offered by officers.
Egypt’s Response
Following the excessive mortality charge, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi shaped a job power to analyze companies suspected of illegally offering pilgrims with vacationer visas. The duty power was headed by PM Madbouly.
Final June, PM Madbouly revoked licences of one other 16 journey firms who illegally distributed vacationer visas. The managers of those firms have been additionally prosecuted for fraud.
This follow is prohibited underneath Article 21 of the Egyptian Hajj regulation Legislation, which decrees a advantageous of EGP 1 to three million for entities who violate the regulation (roughly USD 21,000 to USD 62,00).
The Insurmountable Prices of Hajj
Hajj has turn into more and more inaccessible to Egyptian pilgrims following devaluations of the Egyptian pound. The BBC estimates the prices of a typical Hajj pilgrimage to common USD 6,000, or roughly EGP 600,000. To flee this unimaginable price ticket many Egyptian pilgrims resorted to firms offering vacationer visas as an alternative.
Sayyed, the son of an Egyptian pilgrim who travelled with out the Hajj allow as a result of value, informed the BBC that his mom “had (entry to) none of those amenities” and famous she was “completely deserted”.
Human Rights Watch argues that Saudi authorities additionally “have an obligation to guard individuals’s well being from recognized hazards like excessive warmth, which the local weather disaster is barely making extra frequent and intense.
Saudi authorities claimed that they did present many providers to pilgrims with out authorisation, however cited that the variety of unauthorised pilgrims getting into was troublesome to maintain. Furthermore, they famous that Hajj is just not obligatory in Islam for individuals who lack the monetary means.