Plane ticket crisis liable to prevent thousands of Algerian Hadjis from accomplishing annual pilgrimage at holy places of Islam
Several planes bound for the holy places of Islam in Saudi Arabia with on board Algerian pilgrims are reported to have left Algerian airports half-empty on account of a lingering row over the price of the plane tickets set at will by two specialized travel agencies.
- As a matter of fact, thousands of pilgrims have been asked by these two travel agencies to pay a total of 55 hundred thousand dinars instead of the 32 hundred thousand dinars as an overall package for the fulfillment of the annual pilgrimage.
- The extra cost required by these two agencies is said to cover additional provisions of service to be extended to the pilgrims during their Hadj pilgrimage.
- This was not of course to the liking of the Hadjis who thought that the overall cost of their pilgrimage was set at 32 hundred thousand dinars, everything included, in line with the prices fixed by the national office of the Hadj and the Omra.
- These hapless Hadjis have been asked to fork out an extra 2.700 Euros to be able to fulfill their 2010 pilgrimage in line with the new prices set by these two travel agencies namely “Onat” and “Touareg”.
- The head of the national office of the Hadj and the Omra said that these two travel agencies could not be castigated because the scale of prices is freely decided by the operators.
- However, he pledged to look into this vexed issue shortly in order to remedy the situation and allow the remaining Hadjis to smoothly travel to Saudi Arabia for their annual pilgrimage in the next few days.