The Haj operation 2022 was being digitalized to facilitate the pilgrims through security and crowd management systems, said an official of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony on Tuesday. Talking to APP, he said, according to the Saudi Ministry of Haj and Umrah, modern technologies would help improve the performance of Haj rituals for pilgrims and maintain their health with quality of services. The official briefed that this year one million people would perform Haj in which 850,000 would be from abroad and 150,000 would be local ones.
To a query, he said the Saudi Ministry of Haj and Umrah had not allocated the quota to any country yet. The quotas would be allocated to each country with the ratio of one to a thousand after taking into account the recommendations of the Saudi health authorities, he maintained.
The official further informed that the quotas would be determined due the fact that the holy sites in Makkah had legal and temporal limits which required rituals performing at a specific time and place. He said after the two-year hiatus in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, the Saudi government had decided to invite pilgrims across the world and it had assured that no country would be exempted from performing the Haj this year. It is pertinent to mention here that this year’s Haj is open to those who are under 65 years old and have received approved COVID-19 vaccinations by the Saudi Ministry of Health and pilgrims from abroad are required to submit a negative COVID-19 PCR test result performed within 72 hours of the time of departure to the Saudi Arabia.
