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EVEN the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) is no longer safe from snatchers.
Dolores Yap, 54, said she was walking towards the airport checkpoint area when a man disembarked from a white taxi and grabbed her bag.
Yap was still lucky she still had P70 with her and was unharmed.
Benjamine Buagas, desk officer of the airport police division, said the snatching incident had alarmed airport police.
?We will make sure the matter will be addressed because this is the first time that this happened at the airport compound,? Buagas told radio dyAB.
Buagas said airport security would focus on the departure and arrival areas. He said a team would conduct roving of the airport premises while blue guards and airport police would man the checkpoint located at the main entrance.
He said they would beef up their security to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
Buagas said Yap was asked to return to the airport police office on Monday to brief her on the progress of their probe.
Yap, a resident of barangay Tipolo in Mandaue City, was at the MCIA about 3 a.m. yesterday to send off a relative leaving on a 4 a.m. flight to Manila.
While at the departure area, she tried to withdraw money from a Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) ATM but it did not dispense money.
Yap said she transferred to an Allied Bank ATM outside the departure area, but the machine also did not dispense money.
With only P70 in her possession, Yap opted to walk towards the airport police checkpoint located at the main entrance, hoping to ride home on a yellow multicab that ply routes to MCIA.
Yap said she was walking along a dimly lit portion of the airport road when a white taxi stopped near her. A man disembarked from the passenger side of the taxi and grabbed her bag.
The taxi then sped off towards the main road.
?I was lucky that I managed to let go of my bag. If I held on to it, I would have lost balance and fallen into the sidewalk,? she said.
Yap said she was already about 500 meters away from the airport terminal building when she encountered the snatchers.
Worried by the loss of her ATM cards, Yap decided to contact her banks first.
She only reported the snatching incident to the airport police station at about 2 p.m.
Airport police investigators accompanied Yap to the area where her bag was snatched.
Buagas said the lack of CCTV camera in the area made it difficult for them to identify the perpetrators.
He said they were looking into the matter so it would not happen again within the airport premises./CORRESPONDENT FERDINAND MAñUS
