A cleaning staff at the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport has won the hearts of people across the country, after she helped return a handbag containing a loaded check to its rightful owner.
The janitor, who has been identified as 36-year-old Halimah, found the bag in a waiting room at Terminal 2E while she was on duty on Friday morning.
Without opening the bag, Halimah immediately handed the item over to the airport’s aviation security team. Authorities later found that the bag contained important documents, including a passport and a check worth IDR35.9 billion (around US$2.5 million), the latter of which had been signed and stamped.
Authorities managed to track the bag’s owner, who turned out to be an oil businessman from Jambi named Sunardi. Representatives from the Soekarno-Hatta Airport have handed the immensely valuable item to Sunardi at Jambi’s Sultan Thaha Airport yesterday afternoon.
Halimah said reporting the bag was simply part of her responsibilities.
“No matter how big or small the value of goods, as long as it does not belong to us, it’s a duty for officers on the field to report it,” Halimah said.
To local media outlets, Sunardi shared how anxious he was upon realizing that he had lost the bag during his Batik Air flight from Jakarta to Jambi, after which he proceeded to file a report, fearing that someone might have stolen his belongings.
Sunardi expressed appreciation of the airport staff at Soekarno-Hatta, and said he intends to meet Halimah on his next visit to the capital to convey his gratitude. Halimah has also said that she would gladly meet him someday.
Halimah’s honorable honesty has earned her a promotion, with PT Angkasa Pura Solusi, the subsidiary of airport management firm PT Angkasa Pura II that manages hospitality service, giving her the role of supervisor for the cleaning staff. Dorma Manulu, the firm’s president director, said they are planning to give her the symbolic title of “ambassador of trust” for the coming year.
Dorma also noted that many airport employees have done the same thing over the years, but few had gained public attention due to the recovered items being of lesser value compared to what Halimah found. However, the firm said they plan on awarding all of them at an upcoming anniversary event later this month.
