SLBFE chief promises to look into welfare of Rizana's family

Rasika Somarathna

Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE) chairman Amal Senalankadikara who visited the home of Rizana Nafeek in Muttur yesterday, promised to look into the welfare of her family, the SLBFE said.

Senalankadikara yesterday while offering condolences of his department and that of Foreign Employment Promotion and Welfare Minister Dilan Perera to Nafeek's family members, also explained efforts undertaken for her release at the highest level of the government and that of other departments and organisations, both locally and internationally.

Sri Lankan domestic worker, Rizana Nafeek, who was imprisoned at Saudi Arabia's Dawadami Prison since 2005 on the charges of killing an infant in her care during the same year, was executed on Wednesday despite appeals for a pardon from many quarters, both local and international.

As the eldest daughter, Rizana had gone to Saudi in 2005 to work as a domestic aide to support her family who were having financial hardships. At the time of her migration she was only 17, a juvenile and thus underage for employment, according to Sri Lankan law.

A recruitment agency in Sri Lanka had altered the birth date on Nafeek's passport to present her as 23 for her to migrate for work. The High Court in Colombo, later sentenced two recruitment agents to two years' imprisonment for the falsification of Nafeek's travel documents.

Nafeek had been working in Saudi Arabia for two weeks in 2005 when the four-month-old baby of the family she was working for died in her care.

Nafeek who allegedly confessed to crime according to Police later retracted her confession that what she said was made under duress.