I would like to bring to kind attention of Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) on the subject, through your esteemed newspaper.
Presently, most of the private tour operators holding licence, issued by the Tourism Department, established their offices in different parts of Karachi city, especially Soldier Bazaar and Cant. Station (centre of tour operators) offered different types of packages through newspapers and other sources without having their proper set-up at holy places (Makkah and Madina).
In fact, they are working on contract basis with some selected agents who have been authorised by Saudi companies (Shirka) and in most of the cases, passports reached the actual agents after moving from 2 to 3 tour operators. As a result, cost of the Umrah package up by profit margins of each tour operator.
Due to multiple moving of passport, when a pilgrim reached the holy places, he faced miss-commitments/ for accommodation as not provided near to Haram Shareef or not according to specified commitments. In some cases, any of the middle agent holds the passports due to his own disputes and pilgrims faced tremendous problems.
Recently, offering Ramazan Umrah packages at approximately double the cost as compared to Rajab packages. No doubt, during the holy month of Raazan, accommodation charges increased at Makkah and Madina due to rush of the pilgrims. It is surprising that our national carrier (PIA) also increased air fare for Jeddah during Ramazan due to which foreign airlines also increased their fares.
I would like to request the CCP authorities to intervene in the matter to end the monopoly of private tour operators as well as miss-commitments and frauds with real pilgrims of Hajj and Umrah.