Sri Lankan workers who have returned home from the Kingdom and the Middle East have expressed concern over the recent incidents of baggage theft at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Colombo.

The latest victim was a returning housemaid from the Middle East, whose valuables were pilfered upon arrival at the airport.

She has lodged a complaint with the airport police stating that cash and gold worth SR7,000 were stolen from her luggage, presumably while they were being brought from the flight to the baggage belt.

BIA police said that they had arrested one suspect, while another had evaded arrest. Police had recovered part of the cash stolen from the arrested suspect, but the gold IS yet to be found.

Police sources said it was the third such incident this year and there had been many incidents according to the suspects’ confession.

Seven suspects have been arrested so far this year and some of them have got bail after appearing in court. The thieves stole anything and everything from among the baggage of returnees, from undergarments to mobile phones and cameras.

A Sri Lankan attached to a foreign mission in the Kingdom told Arab News that he had had his brand new laptop stolen at Colombo airport.

“I found my laptop missing when I opened my luggage at home, but I could not do anything since I had already left the airport,” he said.

Mohammed Ali said that during his last trip to Colombo, he found some of his neatly packed items, including a pair of spectacles, sprung out on the belt, presumably since they were not expensive. “Airport authorities should carefully monitor baggage handling by the porters,” he said.

The handlers would take unlocked bags off the conveyor belt and ransack the content in search for valuables. “Two or three porters stand guard, while one steals,” an airport officer said.

Mangala Randeniya, deputy general manager of the Sri Lankan Bureau of Foreign Employment, told Arab News from Colombo on Saturday that theft at the airport is a serious matter and that the bureau would do everything possible to stop this.

“We have an SLBFE counter at the airport; any such incidents should be reported without delay,” he said, adding that SLBFE officials would be more than willing to assist in retrieving stolen goods.

SLBFE is a statutory body that looks after the interests of the island’s overseas workers. Foreign workers are expected to register with the bureau after paying a modest registration fee, after which the organization offers a spate of services to workers while serving abroad.