Organisers the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca are said to be heavily indebted to the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) through funds made available for Hajj operations over the past eighty years. This is in addition to $2 million advanced by the government to facilitate the operation of the 2008/2009 pilgrimage. The level of indebtedness was given by the National Hajj Council (NHC), in a letter, to the Chief of Staff, signed by the council's Executive Secretary, Alhaji Salifu Seidu. It said the organisers had piled up the debt despite full payment of each year's package by all pilgrims and appealed to the government to set up a committee of enquiry into their operations over the past eight years. The council noted that the government had used public money to make unexplained payments in which huge debts instead of profits have been recorded at the ADB. Besides it said prospective pilgrims who paid their full fare package but could not go to Mecca were yet to have their payments refunded to them. The letter said it was the hope of the NHC that such a probe would expose and check "the embezzlement and corruption with impunity" ill Hajj organisations and instil sanity, order and transparency in the conduct of the exercise. “It is respectfully suggested that ill order to avoid any complications and further confusion of issues, payments of debt accumulated at the ADB by the former Hajj Boards and the Interim Hajj Management Committee (IHMC) be put on hold, pending the outcome of the suggested investigations,” it requested. According to the letter, it was on record that the former Minister of the Interior, Mr Kwamena Bartels, and the former Presidential Spokesperson, Mr Andy Awuni, and other government officials had promised a public probe into the 2007/2008 Hajj operations organised by the IHMC. Besides, it said, the government was reported to have spent $2 million on the 2008/2009 Hajj, but so far no one has been called upon to account for the huge money from the public treasury. “It is against this background and His Excellency the President's desire and pledge to support any move that will ensure a hitch-free 'Hajj, that the NHC is hereby calling on the government to set up a high-powered committee of enquiry to conduct thorough investigations into those past Hajj payments," it stressed. Source: Daily Graphic