Employee returns RM11,000 left in hotel room

Honesty the best policy: Shafinah (second from left) receiving praise from colleagues at the Holiday Inn Malacca while Ong (right) looks on.

MALACCA: House-keeping staff member Shafinah Ahmad, 24, was cleaning a hotel room when she saw a briefcase with several bank notes sticking out from its side.

Though the bag was shut, she suspected it contained a lot of cash and she panicked.

“Although I was alone in the room, I felt scared to even look at what was inside the bag,” she said, adding that she was stunned when she learnt later that the briefcase carried RM11,000 in cash.

Shafinah said she quickly took the bag, found in a locker when she was cleaning the room on Saturday, to the management's office.

In the meantime, a businessman in his 50s, was travelling back to Kelantan after a stay at the Malacca Holiday Inn for a business trip to the city.

Halfway through the journey, he received a call from the hotel, telling him to turn back to Malacca over an urgent matter.

Holiday Inn Malacca marketing manager Eric Ong said the guest, who did not realise he had left his cash-filled briefcase at the hotel, returned about two hours after he checked out.

“He was surprised and was delighted to have the bag and money returned intact,” said Ong, who had contacted the businessman based on the guest list.

The guest, who declined to be named, said he totally forgot the briefcase when he lugged out all his other baggage upon leaving the hotel.

(Sourced from The Star)

Boat with 100 passengers capsizes in Rajang River, Sarawak

This is sad.

Tragic incident: A photo of the overturned boat taken by Liwan.

BELAGA: An express boat, said to be overloaded with more than 100 passengers returning to their villages for the Gawai festival, capsized in the Rajang River at about 9am on Tuesday near Belaga town.

The boat was travelling from Bakun to Kapit and Sibu.

Belaga assemblyman Liwan Lagang had spotted the overturned vessel and people swimming away from it towards the riverbank when he was flying by helicopter to Kuching.

On dry land: Some of the survivors who swam ashore looking out at the overturned vessel.

He immediately landed at Uma Tevok Long Buyun where he met the survivors and organised a rescue.

He said it was not immediately known if there were any fatalities and what had caused the boat to capsize.

"We haven't done a head count.

"But according to those who swam to safety, there are people trapped in the boat," Liwan said when contacted.

Meanwhile, BERNAMA reported Kapit district councillor Daniel Levoh saying that the boat was believed to have carried more than 100 passengers, although its official load capacity was for 67 seated passengers.

"The boat was supposed to have made the normal transit stop at Belaga but it did not do so as it was already packed.

"Many passengers were seen sitting on its roof which is not allowed.

"There were more passengers waiting for it at the Belaga wharf so that was why it only stopped in midriver to allow crew members to buy food for the journey to Kapit and Sibu," he said.

Daniel said he had received information that a pregnant woman was the only casualty in the incident but this had yet to be verified by the police, who were still at the scene.

Source - Credit to The Star
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2013/5/28/nation/20130528131920&sec=nation