Haj operation chaotic enough to merit military help

By Wisnu Pramudya and Santi W.E. Soekanto

JAKARTA (JP): When it comes to the troubles marring this year's haj operation, the buck should really stop at the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

Gen. Feisal Tanjung, the amirul haj or leader of this year's haj delegation, made this clear last week when he inspected a number of haj dormitories and embarkation points, and found much still wanting. He thus ended the "pass-the-blame" game that has ensued since the first jets carrying the first batch of Indonesian's 195,000 pilgrims left for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 23.

Cancelled and delayed flights, demonstrations by pilgrims who failed to get off on schedule, even a suicide of a prospective pilgrim who twice failed to make it, as well as all the extra flights that had to be arranged to accommodate the late pilgrims: these are only several of the hiccups in this year's haj operation.

"They're caused by the lack of cooperation of the central office of the Ministry of Religious Affairs with other institutions, including the Saudi Arabian embassy," Feisal said.

Previously, those problems were blamed on the Saudi Arabian embassy's failure to produce all of the visas on schedule. Thousands of pilgrims who were supposed to leave on earlier flights, for instance, failed to go because they lacked the complete documents.

The Minister of Religious Affairs Tarmizi Taher, had earlier speculated that the embassy had probably been overwhelmed by the processing of 50,000 visas for umrah, a minor pilgrimage, the previous month.

Miffed, Saudi Arabian Ambassador Abdullah Abdurrahman Alim insisted that the fault was not his; the embassy had issued 125,000 visas days before the first flight was to take off.

"Those visas should have been enough for the first flights to proceed smoothly," he pointed out. "And it's not true that the processing of visas for umrah interfered with that of the visas for haj pilgrims".

Haj officials then retracted the hints they made about the embassy's contribution to the chaos. Tarmizi said in a statement that the mistakes were made by his office.

As indeed they were, Feisal agreed.

Concerned, Coordinating Minister for Political Affairs and Security Soesilo Soedarman recently called a special meeting of ministers under his coordination to discuss the haj operation. It was agreed to involve a security coordinating body in the ongoing haj operation.

The Agency for the Coordination of Support for the Development of National Stability (Bakorstanas) was ready to be deployed and help in all stages of the operation, Soesilo said.

"This is such a massive operation that it's impossible not to make a single mistake," he conceded. "Sending out all these pilgrims is like dispatching 20 troop divisions."

"This job requires perfect coordination from all institutions involved," he said.

Apart from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, eight other institution are involved in the operation: the State Secretariat, the ministries of foreign affairs, justice, health, defense and security, home affairs, transportation and tourism, and telecommunication.

A brief look at the haj operation for the past three years will show why some observers say this is a recurring nightmare: some things happen year after year.

Green or brown?

In 1994, an controversy over the use of ordinary green passports, rather than the specially-issued brown haj passports, strained relations between Tarmizi and Saudi Arabian Ambassador Abdullah Abdurrahman Alim.

On the way home from an advance trip to Saudi Arabia, Tarmizi received reports that Arabian security guards had arrested a number of Indonesian pilgrims entering the country on ordinary passports. He brought the issue to the attention of President Soeharto and the press.

Saudi Arabian Ambassador Abdullah Abdurrahman Alim heatedly denied the reports.

The government, however, decided to forbid Indonesians from going on the pilgrimage using ordinary passports altogether.

Not that this deterred all pilgrims. Some 14,000 people were believed to have made arrangements to go on the pilgrimage using the ordinary green passports. Some of these pilgrims told The Jakarta Post that they did not encounter any difficulties from the Saudi Arabian authorities whatsoever.

Last year, the number of people registering to go on haj reached a record high: 230,000. A total of 40,000 people had to cancel their trip because the Saudi Arabian government allocated a quota of only 190,000 pilgrims for Indonesia.

The huge number of people who had to be placed on the "waiting list" was the most contentious problem last year. The question was raised why the government had kept registration open when it was already clear that not everybody could go.

Transparency

The pilgrims on last year's waiting-list were prioritized this year. The ministry has made sure that no more people had to be placed in the waiting list by introducing a computerized registration procedure, and closed registration as soon as the quota has been reached.

Then the problem of late visas emerged.

Hadimulyo, a member of the House Commission IX overseeing religious affairs and education, suggested that many problems in the haj operation which this year alone involved Rp 1.4 trillion (US$593,471,810) could have been avoided by more transparent management.

"The haj pilgrimage is a religious ritual -- but it's also a public affair, given the huge amount of public money involved," said a member of the Moslem-based United Development Party (PPP) faction.

He identified a number of areas which should be managed with more openness, the first of which being the haj fee, known in Indonesian by its acronym ONH (Ongkos naik haji).

This year the haj fee was Rp 7,290,000 (US$3,090), which includes an daily allowance of 1,500 riyal (approximately US$100) for the 40 days the pilgrims spend in Saudi Arabia. In 1994, the haj fee was Rp 7,070,000, including an allowance of 1,700 riyal.

"Why did the allowance become smaller?" he said. "And where does the bank interest go?"

Hadimulyo also asked why the government was the sole supervisor of such a massive operation. "This year's operation involved funds almost equal to the ministry's budget for this fiscal year," he said.

One of the solutions Hadimulyo suggested was establishing a state-owned company for haj management, thus giving the House of Representatives the authority to control the operation.

Another solution would be to regulate the haj with a special law, he pointed out.

The PPP faction is currently preparing a bill on the haj operation in order to guarantee a smoother operation in the future. Expected to be completed later this year, the bill will emphasize the need for private sector involvement in managing the haj, according to Hamzah Haz, a faction leader.

"The private sector will be given a greater role in the coming haj operation," Hamzah told the Post recently.

If approved, the draft bill would revoke the 1969 Presidential decree which stipulates that the government is the only "organization" permitted to manage haj operations. The presidential decree itself was reformed twice, in 1983 and earlier this year.

Privatization

Another idea to improve the operation mooted by observers is for the government to "privatize" the management of the haj.

One of the reasons for the idea to let private companies handle the operation is the steady increase of the number of pilgrims who choose to go on pilgrimage on trips organized by private tour agencies. In 1994, out of 158,533 pilgrims, 4,783 (3.02 percent) chose private tour agencies, which cost nearly three times as much as the trips managed by the government. The special trips are known here as ONH plus.

Last year, 6,457 (3.29 percent) of the 196,548 pilgrims chose the ONH plus trip. According to Mahfudz Jaelani, chairman of the association of 30 Moslem-owned private tour agencies that manage the haj as well as umrah operations (AMPUH), this year almost 7,000 Indonesian pilgrims went to Saudi Arabia on ONH plus trips.

Mahfudz, however, refused to contemplate the idea of the government relegating this authority to private companies. "The haj is not an ordinary trip, it's a religious service," he said. "If even the tiniest thing goes wrong, and a person fails to go on pilgrimage, the psychological damage would too great to bear."

"I could not imagine a private company being entrusted with the task of managing the pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of people," he said. "Even arranging three meals a day for the pilgrims is a complicated task for us."

Talk is cheap, and many people seem willing to take advantage of this fact. However, it's the Ministry of Religious Affairs, as the sole authority in charge of the haj, which will decide how to improve the operations next year.

Minister Tarmizi has recently promised that things will get better next year.