MAKKAH — Specialized committees have started collecting data on the victims of the crane collapse in the Grand Mosque on September 11 which killed about 111 people and injured about 238 others. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman ordered a compensation of SR1 million for the kin of each of the dead and for each of the permanently disabled victim and SR500,000 for the injured in addition to other incentives including the invitation of two relatives for the next year Haj as personal guests of the King. King Salman also decreed that these compensation payments will not prevent private legal claims by the injured and families of the deceased. “There is no room for fraud. Nobody can illegally benefit from the royal compensation,” said Dr. Mustapha Baljoun, director of the Department of Health Affairs in Makkah. He told Makkah daily on Wednesday that the personal data of every dead or injured victim has been carefully registered in the hospital showing the time of admission by hour and minute. “We will carefully collect the data of all the dead or injured victims to forward complete reports on them to authorities concerned to study their separate files and decide on their cases,” he said. Baljoun said the data is definite and crystal clear. It will include the name of the victim, his or her nationality, passport number, the number of his/her bed, time of admission, discharge or death. He said medical committees will follow up each case to determine the nature of injury if it is curable or permanently disabling. “There is no chance for swindling not even by 0.1 percent. The data is infallible,” he said, adding that so far not a single attempt was made by any ineligible to benefit from the royal compensation. Baljoun said, “Almost all the dead victims have been identified and many of the inured have recovered.” The victims were of 12 different nationalities, with the greatest contingents of fatalities being 25 Bangladeshis and 23 Egyptians. Of the injured, the most represented nationalities were 51 Pakistanis and 42 Indonesians.
