Haj instructors reject city's selection process

Haj instructors reject city's selection process

JAKARTA (JP): About 2,000 haj instructors staged a rally
yesterday, demanding that the municipality revoke its decision to
numerically select Jakarta pilgrims.

The group, mostly women in Moslem clothing, rejected offers to
engage in talks with the head of the religious affairs office,
choosing to stand in front of the building on Jl. D.I. Panjaitan
in East Jakarta.

"We have been faced with a lot of problems in the past few
months," a woman, with a microphone in her hand, said.

"Forest fires, a prolonged dry season, monetary crisis and now
you people intend to make it difficult for people to carry out
their religious obligations."

She ended her speech by shouting Allahu Akbar (Allah is great)
which prompted the crowd to repeated her words.

The protesters, who represented the city's five mayoralties,
called their group the Communication Forum of Instructors and
Consultants for Haj Pilgrims.

According to Suryani Qoidir, a spokesman for the forum, the
new city regulations mean that pilgrims are grouped based on
computer data.

"It's an absolutely unfair decision which we can't
understand," she said.

"Even spouses can be separated even though they enroll at the
same bank. I just don't understand."

The woman next to her said: "Don't do this to us, please ...
unless you want to see elderly and confused pilgrims left alone
among the sea of people there."

In a written statement, the group said if the administration
refused to meet their demands they would go to Mecca on their own
terms as long as they could go together.

By being in a familiar group, the members would not be
confused and the pilgrimage would go ahead smoothly, they said.

"This the first time that the grouping of pilgrims has been
based on enrollment entry numbers from the banks and applied
exclusively to Jakarta pilgrims," Luthfie, the group's spokesman,
said.

Luthfie said the group had relayed their objections to the new
system to Jakarta's vice governors but no answer had been
forthcoming.

"No, we don't want to boycott the pilgrimage but please work
on some principals, such as handling the haj tents in Medina and
the health management in Mecca, rather than changing the grouping
system which has already been operating for many, many years," he
said.

Enforcers

The head of the city's religious affairs office, Bidawi Zubir,
said that his office was merely enforcing the regulation issued
recently by the Directorate General of the Guidance of the
Islamic Community and Haj Affairs, part of the Ministry of
Religious Affairs.

"We hope that we can do something to help them, but we are
just the enforcers."

"We do what we've been told to do," he told the protesters.

But Zubir promised to raise the issue with officials in the
ministry.

According to the office secretary, Damiri Mahdin, there are
250 bank branches in Jakarta that have been assigned to list the
pilgrims.

"This is applied in Jakarta because the number from here is
greater than in other areas of Indonesia," he said.

The group expressed dissatisfaction with the office's response
and pledged to find a solution to the problem. (04/bsr)