04 June 2004	Friday	15 Rabi-us-Saani 1425

PESHAWAR, June 3: Excessive workload and increased international flights have been affecting the performance of law-enforcement agencies posted at the Peshawar International Airport, a senior official claimed.

The three main security agencies - Customs, Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) and Airport Security Force (ASF) - were now reviewing the arrangements at the airport after the recent attempt by a woman to smuggle 37 kilograms of fine quality heroin to Qatar, the official told Dawn here on Thursday.

Zubaida, wife of Sadruddin, a resident of Hyderabad, was arrested by the ASF personnel on Monday morning when she, without going through the ANF and the Customs counters, attempted to board the Qatar Airways flight No QR-347 to Doha.

"The international departure lounge is very small and the recent increase in the international flights from Peshawar has affected the performance of all the law-enforcement agencies," the official said.

In addition, the Peshawar Airport was also being used by the international organizations for the transportation of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, he maintained.

"We have too much workload and that is why the alleged smuggler entered the departure lounge and after seeing the counters of ANF and Customs full of passengers, skipped them. But later she was arrested by the ASF personnel," he added.

There were two scanning machines at the departure lounge before November last and the ASF was given the first counter to check the luggage of every passenger, sources at Peshawar Airport said.

But since December the Customs shifted its scanning machines to the arrival lounge and the ASF was given the last counter to check the passengers through its scanners.

"But we are reviewing the decision now and have been planning to re-adjust the checking counters of all the three law-enforcement agencies," the sources maintained. The ASF scanning machine also could not detect the narcotics as the machine shows orange colours for cloth, soft substance and heroin, the sources said.

"It is very important to have some proper machine or the facility of sniffer dogs for narcotics detection at all the international airports," the sources said. "In fact the lady was arrested by a police constable, Azhar, who stopped her when she was trying to go out of the airport," the sources said.

The police constable, showing his alertness, asked the woman that she came to the airport with a suitcase but now she was going out without her luggage, the sources said.

She was forced to enter the departure terminal again where the ASF by that time had broken the lock of the suitcase and recovered the heroin. "The price of the seized heroin is more than Rs500 million in the international market," said another senior official at the airport. Meanwhile, the ANF had claimed that the woman smuggler was arrested by the agency along with the ASF during a joint operation.

According to the official statement issued here on Wednesday evening, the ANF said that it had broken the network of a gang of international narcotics smugglers and would soon arrest more members of the gang. He Customs authorities have suspended seven officials deputed at the airport on charges of negligence while one official was transferred, the sources said.