SINGAPORE : If you forget and leave your belongings behind in a taxi, you had best pray the cabby is not of the same ilk as the ones recently encountered by two passengers.
On Tuesday, a 42-year-old SMRT taxi driver was charged in court with stealing $11,661 worth of items left behind by a passenger.
Neo Boon Seng is accused of pocketing the items, which included a laptop, a bag, a bottle of wine and foreign currencies worth $5,000.
The passenger in question had boarded the SMRT taxi at Changi Airport's Terminal 2, leaving the items in the front seat area upon alighting.
Officers of the Airport Police Division managed to track Neo down and arrested him last Thursday, the same day the passenger made a police report. The missing items were found in the cabby's home.
Neo's case has been adjourned to Aug 21. If convicted, he could be fined and jailed for up to three years.
An SMRT spokesperson said this is the first case of theft in the company's seven-year history.
Taxi companies that TODAY spoke to said their cabbies are reminded repeatedly to return items left by passengers in their taxis, and theft was viewed as a "serious offence".
Even so, despite the warnings, some taxi drivers still regard what their passengers leave behind as a personal windfall — especially if the latter forgot to note the cab's licence number.
One passenger, who only wanted to give her name as Madam Zhang, told TODAY that a travel bag she left behind in a taxi last Saturday had yet to be returned.
The 37-year-old engineer had reported her loss to the taxi company but has yet to receive any good news. The items she lost included a laptop, a camera, three passports and foreign currencies worth $1,200. A police report has also been lodged.
ComfortDelGro spokesperson Tammy Tan told TODAY the company received an average of 175 reports of lost items a day, in the first five months of this year. About 40 per cent of these lost items are recovered by passengers.
Ms Tan added: "So far this year, our records have shown that none of our cabbies has been charged with theft and 320 cabbies have been commended for being honest."
ComfortDelGro operates 14,500 Comfort, CityCab and Yellow-Top taxis, and employs more than 30,000 cabbies.
Under the Land Transport Authority's Vocational Licence Points System, cabbies who retain found items for 24 hours but less than seven days will be penalised with a $200 fine and five demerit points.
Stiffer penalties, including the termination of their taxi vocational licence and a $500 fine, will also be meted out for items kept for more than seven days.
A taxi driver who accumulates between six and 20 demerit points over a 24-month period may have his vocational licence suspended.
- TODAY
No comments:
Post a Comment