More than meets the eye on The Sunday Times’s ‘millionaire’ cabby
[h=2]
More than meets the eye on The Sunday Times’s ‘millionaire’ cabby[/h]
October 30th, 2012 |
Author:
Editorial
After the Sunday Times featured a cab driver earning $7,000 a month last Sun (28 Oct), there has been a flurry of exchanges among netizens on the Net. Most were quite skeptical and wondered if the Sunday Times’ story is true.
In the ST story, the cabby, Mohammed Hasnor Bin Hashim, 32, was said to have given up his $5,000 security manager job to drive taxi.
A blogger, supposedly a cab driver himself wrote [
Link]:
“If that cabby – Mr. M. H. Hashim, 32, drives for only 8 hours and take home $200 per day after paying his $50 fuel and $100 rental, it means that he collects $43.75 per hour or $0.73 per minute.
At that rate, he is occupied on the road with a paying passenger every minute of the 8 hours, with no waiting at taxi stands, airports or anywhere. Is that possible?
I’m sure you have seen long taxi queue at shopping malls, airports and empty taxis cruising around with no passengers. But Mr. M.H. Hashim is occupied in all the 8 hours with a paying passengers! How preposterous and incredible!”
Another netizen, Rasyed Abdul Rahim wrote on Facebook that that he knows Mr Muhammad personally and said that if Mr Muhammad is earning $7K monthly, he won’t need to ask him to help pay Mr Muhammad’s taxi rental:
Then, a Marcus Lin asked if the identity of this ‘Rasyed Abdul Rahim’ can be confirmed so that the story of Mr Muhammad borrowing from Mr Rasyed can be confirmed. Marcus Lin then questioned if the ST story is proven to be a fake, how can Singaporeans read or listen to the mainstream media of Singapore at all?
Another netizen, Haris Johar, answered that the cabby story from ST “isn’t for real”. Mr Haris said he knows both Mr Muhammad and Mr Rasyed. He confirmed that they are close friends and that Mr Muhammad had asked Mr Rasyed for a loan. Mr Haris even advised Mr Rasyed not to help Mr Muhammad:
The Alternative View [
Link] even posted a screenshot showing a record of Mr Muhammad being the defendant in a Writ of Summons filed on 24 Sep by IBS Credit Enterprise, a legal moneylender, for the amount of $4,001.10:
If this is true, surely Mr Muhammad would have settled the $4,001.10 amount without the need to incur a writ in the first place since he is earning $7K a month?
The Alternative View said, “But if the Sunday Times had been careless with facts – whether inadvertent or not – it has done a disservice to the over 50,000 of cabbies who ply the road day and night and barely make half that amount but may now have to put up with more intense scrutiny from the taxman, just as tax evasion is about to become a serious crime.”
So, is the ST’s story of a cabby earning $7K a month real or fake? If the story is untrue, what is the motivation of ST publishing such a story in the first place? To give “hope” to all our PMETs who are now under pressure from the foreign influx?
What do you think?
.
Related: Misleading report by The Sunday Times on ‘millionaire’ cabbies
Join our TRE facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/TREmeritus
