JAKARTA - Chairman of Commission VIII of the House of Representatives, Ashabul Kahfi, expressed his agreement with the Ministry of Religion's plan to implement health istitha'ah (capability) as a condition for payment of Hajj costs.
"Commission VIII supports the idea of Gus Men (Menag Yaqut) who wants to prioritize health istitha'ah before paying off the cost of Hajj," said Ashabul as quoted by ANTARA, Tuesday, October 24.
Previously, the Ministry of Religion stated that health istitha'ah (capability) would be a requirement for prospective hajj participants in paying the hajj costs.
Minister of Religion (Menag) Yaqut Cholil Qoumas believes that the implementation of health istitha'ah (capability) requirements will suppress cases of pilgrims who are sick or die in the Holy Land.
Ashabul said the approval was not without reason. The reason is, he witnessed for himself how many participants in the Hajj were lacking in the Holy Land because they did not fulfill the hajj istitha'ah.
"I had found that 18 elderly Hajj participants were being treated at the Indonesian Hajj Health Office (KKHI). They were around 70-80 years old. Physically, maybe they were healthy, but it turned out that mentally they did not meet the istitha'ah requirements because of dementia," he said.
He said that Istitha'ah's health requirement was to suppress cases of sick and dead hajj participants. "We hope that next year this kind of thing will not happen again," he said.
According to him, the tolerance limit for istitha'ah that has been applied to pilgrims is still loose, so it has not filtered out istitha'ah optimally.
"For this reason, it is hoped that in the future the istitha'ah assessment process must be tightened so that it is able to screen out istitha'ah and those who have not or are not istitha'ah," he said.
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