Hajj e Badal
By Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd.)
Westridge, Rawalpindi
Different Hajj packages, ranging from 5 lacs for 15 days to 12 lacs for 40 day,s are being offered by the Hajj operators. About 80,000 Pakistanis are expected to make use of these. The number of Hajis sent by the government would be around 70 to 75 thousand. All told, there would be about 150,000 Hajis who would be spending, on the aggregate, about Rs. 350,000 each. The total amount thus to be spent would come to a staggering Rs.52,500,000,000 (52 billion 500 million) and that too mostly in foreign exchange.
This amount will be spent abroad while back home there are millions who have been marooned and remain shelter-less - without food, clothes, medicines, and schools. Some have been forced to sell their children to keep soul and body together. Committing family suicides by the unemployed on not being able to feed them is not an uncommon act any more.
Under such calamitous and trying circumstances could such monies be not given instead to the needy and poor that, I think, could earn them an equal sawab?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
