Bangladesh records lowest Hajj registration turnout as inflation bites

Muslim pilgrims from Bangladesh arrive at King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ahead of the Hajj pilgrimage in Makkah. (AFP)
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Updated 20 January 2024
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Bangladesh records lowest Hajj registration turnout as inflation bites

  • Bangladesh’s Hajj quota this year is 127,000
  • Fewer than 47,800 pilgrims have registered so far

DHAKA: Bangladesh is observing its lowest registration turnout for Hajj, as despite government efforts to reduce the price of packages, most people cannot afford the journey this year.

Only 47,773 prospective pilgrims have registered against the quota of 127,000 granted to Bangladesh by Saudi Arabia for the 2024 Hajj season.

This year, Hajj is expected to start on June 14 and end on June 19. Registration in Bangladesh ended on Jan. 18 — after the first deadline was extended twice following poor response from prospective pilgrims.

“We tried to inform everyone about the Hajj registration deadline. We disseminated information through television, newspapers, SMS, etc.,” Mohammed Matiul Islam, additional secretary at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, told Arab News.

“Our Hajj quota was unfulfilled in the previous year also. But the situation was not like this year. This time, there is a very low number of the people registered.”

He said the government had yet to decide what it would do about the remaining slots.

One of the most populous Muslim-majority countries, Bangladesh struggled to meet the Hajj quota granted by Saudi Arabia in 2023 amid skyrocketing prices of travel.

Several thousand prospective pilgrims could not go to perform the spiritual journey that is one of the five pillars of Islam.

To prevent the same scenario during the 2024 pilgrimage season, the Bangladeshi government reduced by $1,000 the cost of Hajj packages.

The minimum government rate of Hajj from Bangladesh this year is $5,034 — a significant decrease compared with the minimum of $6,000 in 2023.

While last year Hajj tour operators indicated the main problems as high inflation and airfares to the Middle East, currently there are more factors at play, including concerns over political stability as Bangladesh’s recent general election was boycotted by the opposition and turned into one of the country’s most controversial polls.

“It’s the election year, and considering the political situation, I think many people opted to wait. Secondly, a huge number of people from Bangladesh are now performing Umrah,” said Shahadat Hossain Taslim, president of the Hajj Agencies Association of Bangladesh.

“Earlier, people used to perform Umrah (over a period of) three months, but now it is 10 months of the year and all the flights from Bangladesh to the Kingdom are fully loaded with Umrah passengers.”

Persistent inflation remains a main reason too, as although the package price has been reduced, the difference is not felt due to the devaluation of the Bangladeshi taka against the US dollar.

“It still seems very high for the pilgrims as the taka has been devaluated severely in the last year. We reduced the possible maximum amount to ease the burden of the pilgrims,” Taslim said.

“I think that due to the ongoing global recession, Hajj quotas will not be reached by many countries this year.”


India mosque survey sparks clashes, two dead

Armed police personnel stand guard following religious violence near the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal on November 24, 2024. AFP
Updated 22 min 49 sec ago
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India mosque survey sparks clashes, two dead

  • Hindu nationalist activists were emboldened earlier this year when Modi inaugurated a grand new Hindu temple in Ayodhya, built on grounds once home to Babri mosque

LUCKNOW: Indian Muslim protesters clashed with police Sunday with at least two people killed in riots sparked by a survey investigating if a 17th-century mosque was built on a Hindu temple.
“Two persons were confirmed dead,” Pawan Kumar, a police officer in Sambhal in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, told AFP, adding that 16 police officers were “seriously injured” during the clashes.
The Press Trust of India news agency quoted officials saying three people had died.
Hindu activist groups have laid claim to several mosques they say were built over Hindu temples during the Muslim Mughal empire centuries ago.
Street battles broke out when a team of surveyors entered the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal on orders from a local court, after a petition from a Hindu priest claiming it was built on the site of a Hindu temple.
Protesters on Sunday hurled rocks at police, who fired tear gas canisters to clear the crowd.
Hindu nationalist activists were emboldened earlier this year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a grand new Hindu temple in the northern city of Ayodhya, built on grounds once home to the centuries-old Babri mosque.
That mosque was torn down in 1992 in a campaign spearheaded by members of Modi’s party, sparking sectarian riots that killed 2,000 people nationwide, most of them Muslims.
Some Hindu campaigners see an ideological patron in Modi.
Calls for India to more closely align the country’s officially secular political system with its majority Hindu faith have rapidly grown louder since Modi was swept to office in 2014, making the country’s roughly 210-million-strong Muslim minority increasingly anxious about their future.


Man in critical condition after stabbing on London’s Westminster Bridge

Updated 24 November 2024
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Man in critical condition after stabbing on London’s Westminster Bridge

  • Authorities have said that the incident is not being treated as terrorism-related

LONDON: A man is in critical condition after being stabbed during a reported fight on Westminster Bridge in central London, the Metropolitan Police confirmed on Sunday.

Emergency services, including the London Ambulance Service and an air ambulance, were called to the scene at about 10:45 UK time and an injured man was rushed to hospital for treatment.

A London London Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “We were called today (Sunday) at 10.46 a.m. to reports of an incident on Westminster Bridge, SW1.

“We sent a number of resources including ambulance crews, an advanced paramedic, an incident response officer and London’s air ambulance.

“We treated a man at the scene before taking him to hospital,” they added.

Three individuals have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, while a fourth has been detained for affray, the BBC reported.

Two of the arrested suspects sustained minor facial injuries and were also taken to hospital, according to police.

Authorities have said that the incident is not being treated as terrorism-related.

In March 2017, Briton Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians who were walking on the pavement along Westminster Bridge and Bridge Street, injuring more than 50 people, four of them fatally, before killing an unarmed police officer in the grounds of the Palace of Westminster.

He was then shot by an armed police officer, and died at the scene.


Bangladesh prepares to send trained nurses to Saudi Arabia in 2025

Updated 24 November 2024
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Bangladesh prepares to send trained nurses to Saudi Arabia in 2025

  • Authorities are preparing to fulfill a Saudi request for 150 Bangladeshi nurses
  • Migration of skilled Bangladeshi workers has been on the rise this year, government data shows

DHAKA: Bangladesh is preparing to send the first batch of trained nurses to Saudi Arabia by early next year, the country’s state-owned recruiting agency told Arab News on Sunday.

Bangladeshi nationals make up the largest group of expatriates in Saudi Arabia, with nearly 3 million working and residing in the Kingdom. But only a few dozen clinicians are among the group, according to Bangladesh Medical Association data.

In 2022, the two countries signed an agreement on the recruitment of health workers, targeting the large numbers of certified doctors, nurses and medics from Bangladesh’s more than 100 medical colleges.

Bangladeshi authorities are now preparing a batch of over 100 nurses to send to Saudi Arabia, said the Bangladesh Overseas Employment and Services Ltd., a recruitment agency under the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment.

“We got a request to send 150 nurses to the Kingdom … If everything goes alright, we can expect the first batch to (fly out) to the Kingdom early next year,” BOESL Executive Director Shawkat Ali said.

In Saudi Arabia, nurses must undergo the Saudi Prometric Exam in order to practice in the Kingdom. Though Bangladesh has many nursing school graduates, most do not have the required Prometric certifications, he added.

“Our nurses are very skilled and industrious … We have received huge queries for the nurses. But here they need to have the Prometric certification. If we can prepare them in line with the Saudi requirements, it will open new opportunities for our nurses.”

Only around 2 percent of Bangladeshi workers in the Kingdom are skilled professionals, but the number has been on the rise since the beginning of the year, according to data from the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training.

Though most Bangladeshi migrant workers are seeking employment in Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects under its Vision 2030 transformation plan, there has also been a growing demand for health workers from the South Asian nation.

“For our economy, exporting trained nurses to the Kingdom is a big opportunity. We are mostly an import-dependent country, so we need huge amounts of dollars to meet the import bills,” Ali said.

“If we can export a significant number of trained medical staffers, they would be able to send back more remittances.”


Ukraine shows fragments of new Russian missile after ‘Oreshnik’ strike

Updated 20 min 55 sec ago
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Ukraine shows fragments of new Russian missile after ‘Oreshnik’ strike

  • Russia on Thursday carried out a strike on the city of Dnipro last week
  • Use of IRBM in response to Ukraine’s firing US ATACMS and UK Storm Shadow missiles

UNDISCLOSED, Ukraine: Ukraine on Sunday showed journalists fragments of the Russian missile used to strike the city of Dnipro last week, after Moscow said it had tested its new Oreshnik ballistic missile.
Russia on Thursday carried out a strike on the city which President Vladimir Putin said was a test of its new Oreshnik hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM).
Ukraine’s SBU security service displayed metal fragments, ranging from bulky to tiny, on fake grass in front of camouflage netting at an undisclosed location Sunday, AFP journalists saw.
The SBU did not name the missile used but said it was a type they had not seen before.
Oleg, one of its investigators, told journalists that “this is the first time the debris of such a missile has been found on the territory of Ukraine.
“This item had not been documented by security investigators before,” he added.
Oleg said that investigators are examining the fragments and will later “provide answers” on the characteristics of the missile.
He said that the missile was ballistic and had caused damage to civilian and “other infrastructure” in Dnipro.
In a televised address Thursday, Putin said Russia used the IRBM in response to Ukraine’s firing US ATACMS and UK Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory, after the Kyiv allies lifted a ban on it using long-range weaponry to fire into Russia.
Putin said the missile flies at 10 times the speed of sound and cannot be intercepted by air defenses.
The president said it hit a defense industry production facility in Dnipro “which still produces missile equipment and other weapons.”
A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman was heard answering a phone call about a strike on Yuzhmash during a press briefing. Yuzhmash is the Russian name of an aerospace manufacturer in Dnipro now called Pivdenmash.
Neither Kyiv nor Moscow has confirmed whether this was the target.
Putin has promised more combat testing of the Oreshnik missile and said it will go into serial production.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the strike “the latest bout of Russian madness” and appealed for updated air-defense systems to meet the new threat.
The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence has said Kyiv knew several prototypes of the missile had been produced before it was fired.


Indonesia’s Prabowo seeks UAE cooperation in industrialization efforts

Updated 24 November 2024
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Indonesia’s Prabowo seeks UAE cooperation in industrialization efforts

  • Indonesia’s new leader also visited Abu Dhabi in May as president-elect
  • Indonesia, UAE signed new agreements covering energy, tech, healthcare

Jakarta: Indonesia’s new leader, President Prabowo Subianto, is seeking closer cooperation with the UAE on Jakarta’s industrialization efforts as he made his first official trip to Abu Dhabi since taking office last month. 

Indonesia’s relations with the UAE grew under former President Joko Widodo, who in 2021 secured a more than $46 billion investment commitment from the Gulf state. The two countries signed a free trade deal a year later, which came into force last September.

The UAE was Prabowo’s last stop in his first foreign trip since becoming Indonesia’s new leader in October. 

“Now that I have earned the trust from my people to lead Indonesia, I want to continue our good relations,” Prabowo told UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan during their first official meeting in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. 

Jakarta’s priorities are focused on defense, food security and energy security, he said, adding that the government also wants to implement a downstream policy that includes domestic processing of raw materials. 

“This means we want to perform a massive industrialization,” Prabowo said. “In this context, we see that the UAE and Indonesia have similar priorities. We can work together across different sectors and we want to invite the UAE to actively participate in our economy.”

The two leaders also presided over the signing of several agreements as part of their meeting, covering areas such as technology, renewable energy, infrastructure and health. 

“They agreed to increase trade between the two countries, specifically by optimizing the utilization of Indonesia-UAE CEPA,” Indonesian foreign ministry spokesperson Roy Soemirat told Arab News on Sunday. 

“President Prabowo welcomed the UAE president’s invitation to strengthen cooperation in infrastructure and collaboration in international forums to resolve global issues, including peaceful conflict resolution.” 

Prabowo’s visit to Abu Dhabi was his second this year, following a trip in May as president-elect. 

He was concluding his first overseas trip as president, which also included stops in China, the US, and the UK.