Indonesian Consul-General to Hong Kong and Macau Tri Tharyat is scheduled to leave the two special administrative regions to lead the embassy in Kuwait two months later, KT News reported.
“He will still come back [to Hong Kong],” a consular official told KT News last week, pointing out that Tharyat would be leaving in about two months.
Tharyat told KT News in a text message from Jakarta that he will return to Hong Kong before leaving for his new position. He said he will visit Macau to join KT News, the city’s only Indonesian-based radio show and news program, to bid farewell to the city’s Indonesian population.
Tharyat, who has been heading the Indonesian consulate in Hong Kong since August 2016, was in Jakarta last week for his appointment as the new Ambassador of the Republic of Indonesia to Kuwait.
He was praised by KT News as a “charismatic” father figure who has been very close to Indonesians in Hong Kong and Macau and helped build a friendly image for the consulate general.
There have been no reports about his successor.
Tharyat was among 16 newly-appointed Indonesian ambassadors whose appointments were made official in an inauguration ceremony on Monday last week at Indonesia’s presidential palace – the Merdeka Palace – in the capital city.
Prior to his posting in Hong Kong, Tharyat served in several Indonesian diplomatic missions, including at the embassies in Nairobi and Paris. He holds law degrees from Padjajaran University in Bandung in Indonesia and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States.
According to the Macau government’s statistics, as of November 2018, there were more than 5,300 Indonesians working in Macau, holding the city’s so-called blue cards. This number excluded several hundred Indonesian citizens who hold Macau permanent resident ID card, some of whom make up part of the city’s population of Chinese Indonesians.
Meanwhile, there are more than 150,000 Indonesians in Hong Kong, mostly domestic workers. According to the Kuwait government, there are about 8,800 Indonesians there.
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