Saudi Gazette report
MAKKAH — More than 138,000 personnel have been deployed by various authorities to serve about two million pilgrims performing Haj this year.
Minister of Haj and Umrah, Muhammad Saleh Bantan, informed a meeting of the Central Haj Committee in the holy city on Saturday that his ministry has deployed more than 95,000 men and women to serve the pilgrims. This is in addition to a large number of volunteers and boy scouts.
The meeting, chaired by Makkah Emir and Chairman of the Central Haj Committee Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, discussed executive and operation plans of the concerned government bodies to provide the best possible services to the pilgrims.
Bantan said the Kingdom's leadership has directed all the concerned government and private bodies to serve all the pilgrims — including the Iranians and Qataris — without any discrimination or bias.
But the minister warned that any attempt to politicize the pilgrimage will not be tolerated and any sinister design to vitiate the peaceful, tranquil and pious atmosphere will be dealt with sternly.
The minister expects about 1.7 million pilgrims to come from outside and 211,000 from inside. "The total number of pilgrims will be around two million," he said.
"We have completed all arrangements to provide the guests of God with consummate services," he said.
The General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques said it is deploying about 10,000 men and women employees consisting of engineers, administrators, technicians and workers to implement its Haj plan this year.
The presidency said it is using female guides to educate women pilgrims about the correct methods of performing the pilgrimage and has provided enough copies of the Qur'an and enough quantities of Zamzam water inside the Grand Mosque.
The Makkah municipality has provided more than 23,000 employees including engineers, technicians, cleaners and others to supervise the execution of its plan including the cleaning of Makkah and other holy sites.
Makkah department of health affairs said it has prepared more than 4,000 beds in its hospitals and health centers for treating sick pilgrims.
The department said it has 128 well-equipped health centers in addition to the general hospitals in Makkah, Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah.
It said it will have more than 100 ambulances in the holy sites to provide ambulance services to the needy pilgrims as well as 45 other ambulances to transport sick pilgrims from Makkah and Madinah to the holy sites to complete their Haj rites.
The Saudi Red Crescent Authority has established about 1,245 permanent and temporary centers manned by more than 10,000 male and female employees to provide ambulance services to the pilgrims in addition to three aircraft for air evacuation.
The National Water Company (NWC) has increased the quantity of water being pumped to the holy sites to 18.15 million cubic meters with an increase of 21 percent over last year.
According to official statistics, as many as 570,568 pilgrims have so far arrived in the Kingdom including 564,239 by air, 480 by sea and 5,849 by land.
Since the start of the Haj season, a total of 385,191pilgrims visited Madinah to pay homage to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and pray at his mosque. About 209,000 pilgrims are still staying in the Prophet's City.
