Saudi Gazette report

JEDDAH — Pakistanis topped the list of overstayers after the last Umrah season with 6,905 people failing to leave the kingdom in time.

As many as 1,453,440 Pakistanis performed Umrah in 1438H (2016-2017) of whom about 0.47 stayed on in the Kingdom in violation of residency rules, according to Al-Hayat newspaper.

Nigeria, with 1,629 overstayers came second and Egypt, with 1,081 occupied the third place.

Sudan and Indonesia occupied fourth and fifth places respectively each with 592 overstayers.

Indonesia has also occupied the second place in the number of the Umrah pilgrims who stood at 876,246 followed by Egypt which had 608,561 pilgrims.

India, with 525,278 Umrah pilgrims came fourth while Turkey with 440,398 came fifth.

According to the data released by the Ministry of Haj and Umrah, there were 413,464 Umrah pilgrims from Algeria, 379,758 from Jordan, 666,717 from Iraq, 250,089 from Malaysia and158,805 from the United Arab Emirates which ranked 10th in the number of the Umrah pilgrims.

Meanwhile, the National Haj and Umrah Committee (NHUC) expected the number of the local Haj and Umrah companies to reach 500 from only 48 last year.

The committee said the market would accept this large number of companies and added that a number of new domestic companies were lately given licenses to operate.

In a meeting with the companies organized at the headquarters of the Makkah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the committee asked them to choose good representatives in about 200 countries in the world.

It advised the companies to deposit a guarantee sum of SR200,000 in the country of their foreign representatives to cover up for any shortcoming.

According to the committee, the Umrah days are now 300 starting on Muharram 1 and coming to an end on Shawwal 30.