AN INDIAN taxi driver handed in a bag mistakenly left in his car by a passenger to find it contained QR111,000 in cash. Balakrishna Shetty made the discovery a few days ago after giving a lift to an Arab national. The modest driver, who works for the government-owned firm Mowasalat, said: “He is lucky that I found his bag before any other passengers boarded the car. Otherwise, things could have been different.” Yesterday, Shetty’s bosses publicly commended the driver for his “honesty and dedication to work”. They presented him with a certificate and gifts. According to company sources, Shetty, who comes from Mangalore in southern India and who has been working as a taxi driver for about two years, handed over the bag to the company’s main call centre in Mesaimeer, without even opening it. It was only when one of the officials checked the bag in a bid to identify its owner that it was found to contain a number of valuables and a huge amount of money. Shetty’s honesty was honoured at a special meeting, attended by Mowasalat executive director Ahmed Busherbek al-Mansouri as well as the senior business development director Ahmed al-Ansari, acting marketing manager Tim Garcia, and senior shift controller in the taxi department Asif Nazeer. According to Mowasalat, it is not the first time that their employees have acted with such integrity. In a statement, the company said: “This is only a part of the bigger things that we do regularly from maintaining our cars inside-out and bringing our passengers to their destinations safely and comfortably.” In other cases of refreshing honesty, a taxi driver, called Shaly Dharmarajan, returned foreign currency worth QR16,000 to a visiting Switzerland-based Arab who had left it behind in a wallet after taking a cab ride to Doha’s City Centre in 2004. Moved by the Gulf Times report on Dharmarajan’s honesty, a Western expatriate living in Doha gave him a cash reward of QR3,000 and a two-way ticket to his native India. It was the second time Dharmarajan had been in the news; previously he had returned a Western expatriate’s wallet containing approximately QR2,500. It had taken him two days to find the owner. GT

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