Me and my younger brother are residing in Qatar with our wives and our children; our parents and majority of our family lives in Karachi. Me and my family were too concerned about getting my parents to perform Hajj for the past few years. Both my father and mother are around 60 years of age. I somehow convinced them to go to Hajj this year and subsequently started gathering information about criterion and documents required during the application process. Our initial group was formed comprising of 6 persons including my parents, me, my wife with an infant son and my mother-in-law (living in Punjab). Keeping in mind the growing good reputation of Government Hajj scheme, we decided to try our luck with the same. The main questions that arose were:
1. How can Overseas Pakistanis apply through government scheme and how will the passports will be shipped to and from Pakistan for visa purposes. Can we form same group with our parents?
2. Can a person living in Punjab make a group with those living in Sindh?
3. Is an infant aged one and a half years allowed to go with parents?
I started by calling the Ministry of Religious Affairs Office in Islamabad who were very helpful and co-operative. They responded affirmatively to the above questions. They said that you have to come to Pakistan about 2 months in advance for the visa purpose; I said that I cannot have such a long leave from my company. “Once your Hajj application is approved, you can write an application to the Ministry requesting special handling of your application as per your constraints; hopefully they will resolve this issue”. Then to further refine my plan, I called Haji camp in Karachi and discussed my situation with the responsible person there. He was also very considerate and co-operative. “You apply for Hajj and once your application is approved, we will handle everything Insha-Allah” he said. Now, I was quite satisfied and confident and gave green signal to my father to go ahead with the application process explaining him the strategy.
With the passage of time, 6 more family members were added to our Hajj group, making a handsome potential group of 12 including an infant. I kept on trying my luck through various different channels. I applied for Hajj application through the online system practiced in Qatar; here I found out that only people living for 3 years or more here are eligible for application. So my wife’s application was automatically rejected due to this clause.
Overseas Pakistan nationals usually go to Hajj via Hajj Quota given for Expats in few countries OR through Private scheme in Pakistan. In private Hajj scheme, they apply via private tour operators and send their passports with their acquaintances back home and then after visa stamping somebody coming back from Pakistan can bring their passport back. But it is pertinent to mention here that this is illegal practice as per rule #6 listed down at the last page of Pakistani passports.
“Sending passport through mail or some other way is illegal as per Laws”. The second option via private scheme is to go back to Pakistan about 7-10 days ahead of Hajj flight and the resourceful Hajj Operator gets visa stamped within this time; this way is usually more expansive than normal channels.
