All in a day’s work: Hassan on the phone with Chong’s husband about the wallet he left in the taxi.
JOHOR BARU: Honesty is the best policy for taxi driver Hassan Syed Ali, who drove about 40km from Larkin in Johor Baru to Kulai to return a wallet left by a passenger.
The 54-year-old, who has been driving a taxi for 10 years, said that the incident happened on July 14 after he picked up a couple along Jalan Wong Ah Fook here.
“They came from Singapore and wanted to go to a mall in Skudai, so I sent them there.
“After they disembarked from my car, I picked up another passenger not far from the mall who then told me about a wallet on the backseat,” he said here yesterday.
Hassan added that after he sent that passenger to Larkin, he checked the wallet to look for the owner’s address, which turned out to be in Kulai.
He decided to return the wallet, which contained cash, documents and bank cards.
“It took me an hour and a half to drive to Kulai and locate the house, but the owner was not home at the time.
“I spoke to one of the neighbours and asked whether they knew the wallet’s owner. The neighbour told me that they knew the person and called him immediately.
“I then spoke to the person on the phone and told him that I had given his wallet to the neighbour before leaving and continuing my work,” he said, adding that the person thanked him several times during their conversation on the phone.
Hassan said what he did was a small matter as he always believed that “honesty is the best policy”.
“The owner must have been in a panicked state when he realised that his wallet was missing. I would have felt the same if it had happened to me,” he added.
Joan Chong, the wife of the man who dropped the wallet, said she and her husband were grateful to Hassan.
Chong, 40, a Malaysian with Singapore permanent resident status, said her husband only realised his wallet was missing after they were already inside the shopping centre.
“We went back to the drop-off area hoping to catch him but the taxi driver had already left and we did not know how to reach him.
“So, we decided to get into another taxi and went back to Jalan Wong Ah Fook hoping to see the driver there, but we could not find him,” she said, adding that they then headed to a nearby police station to lodge a report on the missing wallet.
Chong said while her husband was in the midst of lodging the report, he got the call from the neighbour saying that the taxi driver was in front of their home, wanting to return the wallet.
“We are very relieved and very grateful to him. Not only did he return the wallet, he drove all the way to Kulai and spent time looking for us,” she added.
Chong said she posted about the incident on Facebook, which was shared over 2,800 times and received 11,000 reactions.
