RIYADH, 26 March 2008 — The new Sri Lankan ambassador to the Kingdom, Abdul Ajeed Mohamed Marleen, arrived on Sunday at King Khaled International Airport where he received a warm welcome by members of the Sri Lankan community and embassy officials.
Marleen, an eminent Colombo lawyer who has been in practice for the past 36 years, succeeds A.M.J. Sadiq, who was recalled by the Foreign Ministry.
Marleen was given the post of president’s counsel in 2001, an honor conferred on outstanding members of the legal profession. Since 1991 he has been the president of the Moors Islamic Cultural Home (MICH) and secretary general of the Afro-Asian Solidarity Association, which is based in Cairo. He is also the chairman of Board of Management of Zahira College in Colombo, which is the principal Islamic educational institution in Sri Lanka’s capital.
“My priority is to focus initially on the welfare of migrant workers. It is the government’s duty to look after their interests during their overseas stay and help them lead a problem-free life,” Marleen said, pointing out that there were more than 500,000 Sri Lankans in the Kingdom and that a majority of them were domestic workers.
Addressing his officers at the mission yesterday, Marleen said he intended to form a data bank of all Sri Lankan migrant workers in Saudi Arabia so that each one could be tracked at the touch of a button. He noted that in times of emergency, the mission finds it difficult to trace the whereabouts of a housemaid working in the Kingdom. Besides promoting investment in Sri Lanka, Marleen said that he wanted to bring more Saudi tourists to the island. “Saudis who have visited the island have repeated their visits several times and had also introduced Sri Lanka’s resorts to their friends,” Marleen said.
He said an increase in the number of Saudi tourists would build bridges of understanding between the two nations.
