RIYADH, 6 March 2008 — A Sri Lankan maid, who was going home on completion of her contract, died at the King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh on Tuesday, consular officials reported yesterday.
Mudiyansalage Wijemenike, 47, collapsed at the airport as she was boarding a Colombo-bound flight. Her sponsor, Ghazi Fahd Al-Ghazi, was present at the airport with his family to see off his maid who was going on final exit.
According to the sponsor, Wijemenike developed a chest pain at the airport as she was going to the airline counter to get her boarding pass. “When she complained of pain in her chest I took her in a wheelchair to the medical clinic at the airport where the physicians proclaimed her dead,” Al-Ghazi said.
The body was taken to a morgue at the King Abdulaziz Medical Complex.
Al-Ghazi said that every member of his family loved Wijemenike, who came to work for him in 2005 on a three-year contract.
“We asked her to come back but she refused saying that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her family in Sri Lanka,” Al-Ghazi said.
A Sri Lankan Embassy official said the sponsor regularly paid her wages and gave her extra money when she decided to go home for good. He footed the bill for repatriating Wijemenike’s body.
