President Sirisena said that he made the decision as his communication team was not able to contact the Sri Lankan Embassy in Austria for four and a half hours.“I wanted to get in touch with our Ambassador over an official matter,” the President said.

“My communication team attempted to contact the Embassy for four and a half hours. There are six telephone lines at the Embassy. None of the lines were answered. This embassy is concurrently accredited to four or five other countries. If they do not answer a single telephone call coming from six telephone lines, neither the staff in the embassy nor the representatives in the other countries will receive any message. This is the reason why I took such a decision,” the President said.

President Maithripala Sirisena made these observations while addressing the International Ozone Day Celebration 2018 held at the BMICH yesterday morning.