Ten Years of SAACB Reports on Annual Hajj Seasons: Recurring Findings and Incomplete Corrections

 

What really changed?

The issue is not that the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau (SAACB) records observations on a particular Hajj season — that is the role of oversight. The more important question is: what happens to these observations after they are recorded? And do the Bureau’s recommendations and the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs' commitments become actual measures that prevent their recurrence in subsequent seasons?

These questions led me to review the SAACB reports relating to Hajj seasons over ten years, from the reports issued beginning in 2016 through the 2025 report, excluding 2021 which did not witness a Hajj season under the usual arrangements because of the Corona pandemic.

The result emerging from this review deserves attention: a number of substantive observations that the Bureau recorded in previous seasons have continued to recur, directly or in similar forms, in later seasons, despite the ministry's responses and repeated commitments to address the observations and rectify the situations!

Indeed, the Bureau’s 2018 report provides a highly significant example; the Bureau noted, in commenting on the ministry’s response, that the responses contained unconvincing justifications, and that the reported observations were repeated observations from previous seasons and the ministry did not address and correct them, which prompted the Bureau to refer the report to the Council of Ministers for their information!

Years later, observations in the 2025 season reports show that the problem of institutional correction was not completely resolved!

On the financial side, observations persisted relating to the absence of an independent budget and a separate closing account for the Hajj season, financial receivables, advances, settlement of trusts, and control of expenditures. In the 2024 season alone the Bureau pointed to trusts approaching 4.7 million dinars associated with Hajj registration fees for the years 1444–1446هـ without settlement or disbursement, in addition to other amounts and receivables that require treatment!

In pilgrim management, the Bureau in 2025 recorded observations related to the fairness and transparency of allocating some quotas, the lack of clear criteria for selecting certain pilgrims, the delay in conducting the lottery draw until after hotels and buses were contracted, as well as the failure to utilize the full quota allocated for official delegations.

In housing and transport, problems of planning, early contracting, and databases stood out, alongside observations related to verifying the status of administrators and the use of some visas in ways that do not align with their intended purpose.

As for accompanying delegations, the reports showed a need for more coordination among the various entities, especially in the health, security and guidance fields, improving criteria for selecting delegation members and distributing them according to the actual needs of the pilgrims.

The observations did not stop at financial and organizational management, but extended to electronic systems; the 2025 report noted the absence of a risk assessment for the Hajj program, and the insufficient conduct of necessary security tests and checks, at a time when the process of registering pilgrims and managing their data increasingly relies on technology.

The file of Hajj and Umrah companies reveals another aspect of the problem. The Bureau recorded cases of qualifying companies despite incomplete documentation and conditions, accepting applications or documents that did not meet requirements, reducing or cancelling fines without documented justifications, qualifying companies that did not meet some conditions, in addition to shortcomings in field visits.

Among the most serious observations is also the weakness of mechanisms for capturing the numbers of Umrah performers and the revenues due as a result of heavy reliance on companies’ self-reporting, which necessitates linking the electronic systems to the crossings and strengthening oversight to ensure knowledge of the actual numbers and protection of public revenues.

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the SAACB recorded important improvements in the 2025 season, including reducing delegations and lowering costs, using the electronic lottery, establishing criteria for selecting delegation members, improving some procedures for contracting housing and transport, direct negotiation with hotel owners, along with some financial and electronic control measures.

But these improvements do not eliminate the basic question: why do some fundamental observations continue from one season to another?

Oversight is not measured only by the number of observations recorded, but by the administrative system’s ability to prevent their recurrence. The ministry’s response to the report and commitment to adopt the recommendations is an important step, but it is not sufficient unless it turns into practical measures, defined responsibilities, timelines, and indicators that can be measured and verified.

Here a broader issue than the Hajj season itself appears: how strong is the follow-up and accountability system after SAACB reports are issued?

The matter is not limited to the Hajj alone, but concerns the culture of public administration as a whole. When a supervisory observation recurs without a radical remedy, oversight gradually turns from an instrument of reform into a routine process of recording the same mistakes!

There is another aspect no less important: the public’s weak interest in audit reports. Tracking the number of views of the Bureau’s published reports in recent years shows, according to the monitoring I conducted, limited and similar view counts in most years, despite the importance of these reports in uncovering the performance of public institutions and shortcomings in the management of public money and public services.

Public oversight cannot succeed without an interested and engaged audience, and audit reports lose much of their impact if they do not become the subject of public discussion, societal accountability and institutional accountability.

The conclusion is that the problem is not a single Hajj season report, nor an audit observation here or there. The deeper problem is the persistence of some observations over many years, without recommendations and commitments turning into permanent institutional reforms!

Therefore what is required is not only issuing new reports, but establishing a clear and binding mechanism to follow up on the implementation of SAACB recommendations, specifying who is responsible for each observation, the deadline for its correction, and disclosing the level of implementation in the following season!

The pilgrim deserves more efficient and transparent management, public money deserves better protection, Hajj and Umrah companies deserve clear and equal rules, and the Palestinian citizen deserves to know: are the errors revealed by oversight corrected… or will they come back to us in the next report?