JEDDAH, 12 June 2005 — Sri Lankan Consul General A.M.J. Sadiq, who has ended his tenure of one year and three months in Jeddah, will assume charge as the country’s ambassador in Riyadh toward the end of June.
Sadiq succeeds Ibrahim Sahib Ansar who left in April after three and a half years as the country’s ambassador in Riyadh.
Ansar is now the director general of overseas administration at the Foreign Ministry in Colombo.
During his short term as consul general, Sadiq, who succeeded A.C.M. Ibrahim, reorganized the consulate when it was mired in controversy over the issue of runaway maids. It was alleged that maids who had run away from their sponsors for various reasons took up jobs with families with the help of certain members of the consulate staff.
“I fulfilled the task, but had to extend my stay as the consulate had to be shifted to its new location at Khaled Bin Waleed Street,” the consul general told Arab News on the eve of his departure home.
Sri Lankan community members said they were grateful to the outgoing consul general for the order and discipline that he had brought about in the working of the consulate.
Sadiq came from Colombo where he was director of publicity at the Foreign Ministry. Before that he had worked in the country’s diplomatic missions in Paris and Islamabad.
During the Gulf War, Sadiq was a member of the Sri Lankan special task force that repatriated the stranded islanders from Kuwait to Colombo.
