Gracious Society, My Foot!

I have never written to the Straits Times forum before but something that happened triggered off the urge and there, i found my letter being published online today. Check out the ST forum.

Cabbies That Refused To Take The Handicapped

My fiance and I conduct lessons at the Handicaps Welfare Association (HWA) every week.

On a few occasions, we have noticed apparently empty taxis failing to stop for our students when they try to hail one just outside the association's main gate.

We have always given these drivers the benefit of the doubt - thinking that they might have been in a hurry to change shifts or might have missed the waving figures in the poor lighting. However, what we saw last Friday was unjustifiable.

We walked out to the main road and managed to get a taxi driver to turn into the lane where HWA is located. We signalled for him to turn into HWA but as soon as he realised his passengers were not us (so-called 'able-bodied' people), he made a U-turn right before us and sped off.

I was shocked by his act of selfishness but what was even more appalling was that the same thing happened again.

Another taxi driver (SHC 5112R) turned into the same lane on our request but as soon as he saw us pointing in the direction of HWA, he blatantly indicated he did not want to pick up a disabled passenger by simply shaking his head and refusing to stop.

This lack of empathy for a fellow human being is disturbing. With all the talk about progressing towards a gracious society, such behaviour is reprehensible.

I hope the taxi companies will look into this and enforce its regulations more strictly to prevent a recurrence of such acts.

p.s. Bad, bad cabbies. I demand justice for my students!