ISLAMABAD: Minister for Religious Affairs Sardar Muhammad Yousuf on Saturday walked back a statement that 40,000 religious pilgrims were missing, clarifying that the figure stemmed from a \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d of outdated paper records that have not yet been fully digitised.<\/p>\n
He told reporters that approximately 40,000 pilgrims\u2019 records remain in paper form and have not been transferred to the digital registry system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was never said that thousands of Pakistanis are missing,\u201d Mr Yousuf said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe records of around 40,000 pilgrims were previously maintained in paper form and have not yet been fully transferred to the central digital registry.\u201d<\/p>\n
The initial report, which said tens of thousands of pilgrims (zaireen) had not returned from trips to Iran and Iraq, was first floated by the minister himself as he announced a travel system overhaul.<\/p>\n
To prevent future errors and enhance security, the Ministry of Religious Affairs launched a modern online registration system for all pilgrims travelling to Iran, Iraq and Syria.<\/p>\n
The move is also aimed at curbing instances where individuals use the pilgrimage as a cover to migrate illegally to Europe through Turkiye.<\/p>\n
Under the new system, tour operators must be officially registered, a practice similar to the one implemented by Saudi Arabia for Umrah pilgrimages.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the new system, every pilgrim and group organiser will be issued a QR code for easy identification and coordination,\u201d Mr Yousuf said.<\/p>\n
He added that the government will now share complete pilgrim lists with authorities in Iran, Iraq and Syria ahead of travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis proactive step will eliminate the possibility of any misunderstanding or propaganda regarding the movement of Pakistani pilgrims,\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD: Minister for Religious Affairs Sardar Muhammad Yousuf on Saturday walked back a statement that 40,000 religious pilgrims were missing, clarifying that the figure stemmed from a \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d of outdated paper records that have not yet been fully digitised. He told reporters that approximately 40,000 pilgrims\u2019 records remain in paper form and have not been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10893,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10894,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10892\/revisions\/10894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}