Hyderabad techie's app aims at emergencies during Haj

Hyderabad: A major problem that pilgrims from India and the sub-continent face during the Haj is the lack of knowledge of the Arabic language. This creates immense communication problems at Mina, where about 1 lakh fire-proof tents exist, and at the Mount Arafat about 20 km away.

To assist these pilgrims, a Hyderabad engineer working at Mecca has developed a free mobile application, ‘Huji app’ after a year-long research at Mecca, Mina and Arafat. It is available only on Android now.

Mr Sheik Abdullah from Santoshnagar in the city, a quality control engineer, said he started working on the app after watching the plight of pilgrims when a crane crashed at Mecca last year killing 110 persons, and a stampede which claimed 700 lives.“People from all over the world were worried about their loved ones and began calling up. The mobile network was jammed for about 72 hours after each incident. The pilgrims without knowledge of Arabic suffered as they searched for their group in the confusion. I decided to develop the application which can assist non-Arabic pilgrims,” he said.

A friend in need

The ‘May I Help You’ feature can assist the user as well as Saudi Arabian government which deploys about 1 lakh police personnel, in the ratio of one to 50 pilgrims, 25,000 health care staff and 5,000 volunteers.

Mr Abdullah said most pilgrims died at Mount Arafat due to heart attack and breathing problems. Those in need of medical aid can use the ‘Need doctor’s help’ or ‘Emergency’ feature, and a message would be passed on to the department as well as doctors along with the GPS position of the pilgrim.

He said as per the statistics of the Saudi Arabian government, at least one per cent (50,000) of the total 50 lakh pilgrims would be medical staff, of which at least 25,000 pilgrims might be physiotherapists. He said the app offered a category for doctors during the registration. This would help locate doctors.

Mr Abdullah said he started the project in September last year and gathered inputs from the Saudi government and records with the Mecca authorities in three months.

“Once I got all the information, I started developing the application with the help of a startup, Problems & Solutions. I spent about Rs 4 lakh for the research and development of the app,” he said.

Mr Abdullah said this was the first app categorised by Google Play related to Haj assistance. It was the first independent app which topped the list 24 hours after it was submitted.