TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Deputy Speaker Syarief Hasan urged the government to intensively lobby the Saudi Arabian government to grant umrah permits. Syarief deemed the talk is necessary given that Saudi has not yet given a signal to allow entry of pilgrims from Indonesia.

“This policy should be communicated with Saudi so that Indonesian pilgrims can perform umrah at Masjidil Haram,” said Syarief as quoted from Antara, Monday, October 4.

Syarief mentioned that based on Saudi Gazette’s news article, Saudi increased the daily capacity of umrah pilgrims from 70,000 to 100,000. He opined that Saudi would seriously consider Indonesia’s position as the world’s largest Muslim population country.

“The government must be able to convince Saudi by showing the data that Indonesia has managed to significantly suppress COVID-19 transmission,” he said.

The Democrat Party politician said the COVID-19 data could strengthen the lobby so that Indonesian umrah pilgrims could fly to Saudi Arabia.

Syarief also urged the government to increase testing because the improving COVID-19 trend was not in line with the rising trust of other countries in Indonesia, especially in terms of the umrah pilgrimage. “The number of deaths has dropped, but the tracing and testing capacity has also decreased. So we have to boost the testing,” Syarief said.

Read: Saudi Arabia Yet to Open Hajj, Umrah Pilgrimage for Indonesians

ANTARA