Cases concerning stealing tourists' possessions are on rise as the Macao Special Administrative Region is seeing a tourism boom, according to the Macao Security Police Tuesday.

The police bureau reported four serious cases of theft of tourists with the biggest one inducing a loss of 82,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$10,250) in cash and possessions worth some 7,538 US dollars claimed by a tourist from Shanghai.

The police said that most of the theft cases happened in restaurants and hotels targeting at well-off individual travelers.

The number of visitors from China's mainland to Macao amounted up to 5.74 million last year, representing a momentum increase of 35.4 percent on 2002, as a result of the central government's relaxed exit restrictions on individual travels to Hong Kong and Macao.

The tourist boom has brought new challenges to Macao's police force, which is in an urgent recruitment of some 200 police, Cheong Kuok Va, Macao's secretary for security told Xinhua. The recruitment will aid the street patrolling, surveillance of casinos and customs examinations to cope with the situation.

(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2004)