Gen. Feisal Tanjung blames ministry for haj chaos
Gen. Feisal Tanjung blames ministry for haj chaos
SURABAYA (JP): Armed Forces Chief Gen. Feisal Tanjung, in his capacity as leader of this year's haj delegation, blamed the Ministry of Religious Affairs for the various glitches during the early phases of this year's operation to send pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.
"They (the problems) were caused by the ministry's lack of coordination with relevant institutions such as the Embassy of Saudi Arabia," Tanjung said when visiting the Sukolilo haj dormitory yesterday.
Indonesia started sending this year's 195,000 pilgrims on March 23. Problems immediately occurred; some flights had to be canceled and others were delayed because a large number of prospective pilgrims did not have complete documents.
Some officials hinted the problems originated with the Saudi Arabian embassy's failure to process the visas on schedule. The embassy, however, argued that it had issued 125,000 visas on schedule, which should have been enough for the first flights to proceed smoothly.
The ministry later implicitly withdrew its criticism of the embassy, declaring it took full responsibility for the hiccups in the haj operation.
"Those problems shouldn't have happened...if only all parties involved had established good coordination," Feisal said.
Feisal, who was accompanied by the assistant Armed Forces (ABRI) chief of social and political affairs Maj. Gen. Suwarno Adiwijoyo, called on haj officials to learn from the mistakes and improve their performance in the future.
"Take notes of the mistakes and evaluate them honestly, so that we won't repeat them," Feisal said. "Everybody needs to engage in introspection to improve professionalism".
Feisal also said that President Soeharto has instructed that ABRI be involved in this year's operation so that pilgrims can have peace of mind and be able to concentrate on their religious duties.
Military officials have been deployed to help in all stages in the operation of sending and bringing home the pilgrims.
Feisal also visited the haj embarkation points of Sepinggan in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, and at Hasanuddin airport in Ujungpandang, South Sulawesi. (01)