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LAST Friday my family and I were at Belt 20 of Changi Airport's Terminal One arrival hall to fetch my father, who was on Garuda Flight 828 reaching Singapore at 5.10pm. While sitting in a row of chairs in front of the exit point, I spotted a black luggage bag by the side of a pink rubbish bin. Having kept an eye on the luggage for more than 10 minutes and finding that the people who were waiting nearest to it had already left. I was very sure that the luggage belonged to nobody. I immediately alerted staff of the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) at the counter near a UOB ATM. I told one of the two women there to alert the police, pointing out the luggage to her. As I walked back to my waiting place with my family, I saw her picking up the phone, seemingly to alert the necessary personnel. What I find appalling is that, for the next 10 minutes, no policeman arrived, despite the presence of Customs policemen at the checkout point about 20m away. The CAAS woman, seated 3m from the luggage, occasionally threw an impatient glance at me while watching over the luggage. No action was taken to evacuate people from the surrounding area. If the luggage had held a bomb and it went off, a lot of people would have been injured. It would appear that the CAAS staff were not trained to deal with unattended luggage.The CAAS woman had no sense of danger and urgency. She risked her personal safety by sitting so close to the unattended luggage, and the airport police were not at the scene fast enough. Yong Kew Lim
IF LUGGAGE HAD HELD A BOMB... If the luggage had held a bomb and it went off, a lot of people would have been injured.
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