COLOMBO, 11 August 2007 — Sri Lanka will send an interim charge d’affaires to its embassy in the Kingdom this week. He will replace the outgoing ambassador A.M.J. Sadiq who is slated to leave the Kingdom soon.
“The interim ambassador will work as part of a stop-gap arrangement for three months,” Hussein Bhaila, deputy minister of foreign affairs, told Arab News here. He said a permanent ambassador would be named later.
Bhaila said that the Riyadh mission and its consulate in Jeddah would be revamped in the coming months with the help of the interim charge d’affaires. The Riyadh mission is to get two new labor welfare officers and Jeddah will get another to look after the interests of the Lankan workers in the Kingdom. “The Riyadh mission would also get a commercial officer to look after bilateral trade,” he said.
According to sources, an officer from the labor wing of the mission will receive marching orders for mishandling some of the labor cases.
The deputy minister who was in the Kingdom two weeks ago, said his government is dedicated to serve the Sri Lankan workers abroad.
“We would not tolerate anybody who does not serve them properly,” he said. “There are more than 1.5 million Lankan workers in the Middle East and the government is depending on their foreign exchange earnings for its national development.”
More than 550,000 Lankan workers are in the Kingdom, out of which more than 80 percent are women.
Kingsley Ranawake, chairman of Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), is expected to visit the mission shortly to study welfare work undertaken by the Lankan missions in the Kingdom and to explore ways of improving them for the benefit of the island’s workers.
Following Sadiq’s recall, chief of protocol at the Foreign Ministry in Colombo, Mohammed Jaaffri, was appointed to take charge of the Riyadh mission. However, Jaaffri’s appointment was withdrawn since he was asked to join the presidential delegation in its forthcoming overseas tours.
Bhaila said the appointment of the interim charge d’affaires will be finalized as soon as Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogallagama returns to Colombo from Libya.
In May, Sadiq was transferred to Colombo effective from Sept. 9. Subsequently, the Foreign Ministry advanced the transfer to July 31 without giving reasons. Considering a request made by the outgoing envoy, the Foreign Ministry extended the transfer deadline until Aug. 10. Sadiq’s placement in the Foreign Ministry is not yet known.
