Rough ride for Hong Kong cabbies: incomes shrink as passengers stay home to avoid coronavirus
- Afraid of being infected by strangers, several cabbies stop driving
- Night-time shock for driver robbed of HK$500 and injured by rider with a knife
A week after being robbed and injured in his taxi, cabby Tom Ku Ching-tung, 35, gets anxious each time he stops to pick up a passenger.
The night-shift driver was in Sham Shui Po on April 2 when a middle-aged man wearing a mask got in and asked to go to Tai Kok Tsui.
“As I neared the destination, he suddenly asked me to stop,” Ku recalls. “Then he pulled out a fruit knife and said, ‘Robbery! Take out all your money, quick!’
“I told him I had only HK$500 and he said, ‘All right’. Then I realised his knife had accidentally cut off the tip of my middle finger. He said, ‘Sorry’, before he took the cash and ran away.”
It was the first time in five years of driving a taxi that Ku was robbed, and he needed eight stitches for his wound. “My hands were shaking uncontrollably the whole night. I was horrified, and very angry at being injured,” he says.
Despite fears concerning the coronavirus outbreak, Ku returned to work as he has bills to pay, including HK$13,000 in monthly rent for the flat he shares with his girlfriend. It is a struggle, he says, as his monthly income has been halved to about HK$10,000.