By Neelam Rahim

On Sunday, 3 million Zamzam water bottles a day in Grand Saudi Arabia’s General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques launched its operational plan for this year’s Hajj season, which mobilizes 10,000 male and female employees and workers to serve the Hujajj.

Sheikh Abdulrahman Al-Sudais, president of the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, launched the plan in the presence of the minister of Hajj and Umrah, Tawfiq Al-Rabiah, and the director of the General Directorate of Public Security, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Abdullah Al-Bassami.

Al-Sudais pointed to the plan being based on ten main axes related to strategic goals stemming from Saudi Arabia’s national transformation plan, Vision 2030.

Al-Sudais also said that all services and programs were being followed up minute by minute to ensure the highest quality through a set of indicators supervised by the presidency around the clock.

“Two thousand electric vehicles had been provided to serve the elderly and people with disabilities, in addition to providing 500 engineering staff, and that the sermon of Arafah would be translated into 10 different languages,” said Al-Sudais.

To facilitate better communications, the General Directorate of Passports has fielded teams of people fluent in 13 languages for this year’s Hajj. These teams will be able to converse in languages including English, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Portuguese, and Bangladeshi.

The field teams have been deployed at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport and Madinah’s Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz International Airport.

This year, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has allowed close to one million people to embark on the Hajj, Inviting pilgrims from foreign countries for the first time in two years after Covid-19 restrictions saw the annual pilgrimage limited to residents of the kingdom.