By Muby Asger gulfnews.com
A Dh15 taxi ride from BurJuman to the Gold Souq nearly ended up costing Patricia Nsanze all her savings.
In Dubai on holiday with her husband Arthur Semaana, Nsanze dropped her wallet on the floor of a National Taxi at 8pm on March 21. Inside were multiple credit and ATM cards, identity cards, social security, health and insurance cards, a UK driver’s licence, over a thousand dirhams, hundreds of dollars and thousands of African shillings.
Fortunately for Nsanze, help was at hand. Having stepped into a taxi following an assignment for XPRESS, I saw an open wallet below the seat. A peak revealed wads of cash and cards but no contact number.
Calls to RTA’s Lost and Found section proved shocking. The official refused to take down my number to pass it on to Nsanze in case she reported her lost wallet. “I realised my wallet wasn’t in my bag the next morning,” says Nsanze. The couple retraced their steps to the souq, spoke to the jewellers they met and were told to call RTA’s Lost and Found section.
“The RTA told me I needed to wait 72 hours,” says Nsanze. “But I was flying out the next morning.” Torn between postponing their flight or cancelling the cards, Nsanze was in tears. “It was then that my mobile rang. Someone had found my wallet! Fortunately, I had left an airway bill in the wallet with my Uganda number. Muby from XPRESS called to tell me the wallet was safe and I could pick it up,” she says.
Nsanze, who works at the British Embassy in Uganda, says she’s appalled that the RTA refused to take down details of the person who called to report she has found the wallet.
