Pressure group calling itself Coalition of Concerned Ghanaian Muslim Pilgrims has called for a reduction of the 2014 Hajj fares.
The National Hajj Committee at a recent News conference pegged the 2014 Hajj fares at $3,450.
However, the Coalition of Concerned Ghanaian Muslim Pilgrims claimed potential Pilgrims could not afford to pay the said amount.
The Coalition’s publicity Secretary, Samudeen Mustapha called for government’s intervention.
“With all these hardships coupled with these exorbitant charges, how does the government expect Muslims to embark on this pilgrimage which is a pillar central to the Islamic faith?”
He fumed, “The exorbitant increases in the costs for successive Hajj over the years is denying thousands of Ghanaian Muslims the opportunity to honour this pillar of faith.
“We are afraid that if this trend continues the average Ghanaian pilgrim will have to pay through his nose to be able to perform Hajj in the next five years in the words of the National Hajj Committee head, Alhaji Abdul Rauf Tanko,” Samudeen stated.
In a sharp rebuttal, Deputy Public Relations Officer of the National Hajj Committee, Alhaji Mohammed Amin Lamptey said the group was ignorant of the Committee’s operations. He debunked the assertion that there was an upward adjustment in the 2014 Hajj fares.
“The Hajj Board never even added a Dollar on what pilgrims paid last year. We even tried to manage the situation because we knew how the cedi is really suffering against the Dollar so the Hajj administration was quite strategic; when other countries were increasing their fares we did not do that because we knew that it was going to affect our own people so we maintained what people paid last year.”
Alhaji Amin Lamptey attributed the situation to the fast depreciation of the cedi against the Dollar.
By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citifmonline.com/Ghana