Honorary Consulate of the Maldives
Honorary Consulate-General of The Maldives 🇲🇻
Location: Kowloon Centre, Suite 201-5, 29-39 Ashley Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui
Today was one of the hottest days since starting our project, and while we couldn’t visit the actual Maldives, visiting the honorary consulate in Kowloon was still a great relief. Leaving the second floor elevators, we were directed to a travel agency where we found the Honorary Maldivian Consulate. Immediately we were impressed by the two bottles of Bonaqua on the waiting room table, we were touched by this gesture. After a few short moments, we were introduced to Mr. Vijay Harilela, the very charismatic 😎 Honorary Vice Consul of The Maldives. The Harilela family is a very prominent family in HK with deep roots throughout the city.
As our first small island nation, we were intrigued by the specialized role this consulate had in contrast to others. Surprisingly, The Maldives was one of the first nations to establish an Honorary Consulate in Hong Kong, with the mission beginning in 1993. So far, The Maldivian Consulate’s largest focus is increasing tourism from Hong Kong, this was recently bolstered by an air service agreement that allows direct flights between the two countries.
Unfortunately, as the Maldives doesn’t have a large manufacturing sector due to its size, it mainly focuses on tourism. In fact, the Maldives’ focus on tourism is so great that they were one of the first countries to reopen their borders despite COVID-19 in August 2020. Because of the densely populated nature of the islands, this makes transmission of COVID-19 easy. Despite this, Mr. Harilela made it clear that a greater threat was the increasing effects of climate change on the country. As such, the Maldivian government is a global leader in encouraging green energy usage. Lastly, the Maldivian population in Hong Kong is the smallest we’ve encountered, Mr. Harilela estimates that only 1-2 Maldivians currently reside in Hong Kong.
We’d like to thank Mr. Harilela and his staff for their hospitality, and we encourage you all to commit to sustainable practices so in the future we can still enjoy the beautiful Maldives!
