An Aussie cab driver who was once physically assaulted by a drunk pedestrian has revealed why he loves his job despite his ordeal.
Muhammad Azam Warach, 70, who has been working for more than three decades as a taxi driver in Sydney, said he has never considered walking away from the job.
‘I’ve been doing this for 35 years. It’s the only thing I know how to do and I’ve never imagined myself doing anything else,’ Mr Warach told Daily Mail .
Mr Warach, who lives in Leppington, in Sydney’s south-west, said he like so many of his fellow cab drivers, has endured the uglier parts of driving a taxi in the Harbour City on many occasions.
The father-of-three recalled one terrifying incident when a man assaulted him while he was working in the city.
‘He came around the driver’s side of the car and broke the glass and hit me on the side of the head. He was drunk,’ Mr Warach said.
Mr Warach said he suffered minor injuries and reported the attack to police.
He also revealed several other incidents involving pedestrians smashing the windows of his vehicle.
‘One guy damaged the front windshield because he wanted me to go quickly while I was waiting at the traffic lights at an intersection,’ Mr Warach said.
‘Another guy damaged the front passenger side window of the car.’
Mr Warach said he has experienced fare evasions several times and he was once falsely accused of stealing a passenger’s wallet.
The incident happened at a McDonald’s restaurant in Liverpool in 2023 when a man asked Mr Warach to take him to the drive through at the fast food store.
‘He suddenly got out of the car [when they pulled up at the drive through] and accused me of taking his wallet,’ Mr Warach said.
‘He was sitting in the back seat … how could I have taken it?’
The manager at the store witnessed what happened and told Mr Warach to park his taxi in the car park nearby before they called police.
‘They searched his bag and found his wallet inside,’ Mr Warach said.
In another incident Mr Warach was forced to fork out $250 for parking illegally one night in a city street.
His passengers – a man and a woman – asked him to pull over before they got out after they claimed they wanted to see a place that caught their eye.
‘I thought they just wanted to have a quick look and would come back so I waited for them and they never came,’ Mr Warach said.
‘I was only there for a few minutes before a parking ranger came up to me and gave me [the] fine.’
Mr Warach tried to explain the situation to the parking ranger and apologised, but Mr Warach said he didn’t want to hear his side of the story.
He never got paid the fare for the cab ride and also had to pay the parking fine even though he claims he was told by police that he wouldn’t have to foot the bill.
Mr Warach smiled when asked if he ever felt he had enough of the bad experiences and challenges the job often entails.
‘These things are a part of the job and I’ve never been afraid of what might happen. The only thing I am scared of is God,’ he said.
‘Like I said to you before 99 per cent of people are good. Only one per cent are bad.’
He said driving a cab in Sydney is much more safer compared to when he first started started working as a taxi driver.
Mr Warach grew up in a village located on the outskirts of the city of Lahore, in the province of Punjab, in eastern Pakistan.
He left Pakistan in 1982 with a desire to explore the world and moved to Germany where he took up a job working as a chef at an Italian restaurant.
He came to in 1986 after he spent several years living in Saudi Arabia and Canada.
He spent his first night in Sydney at Lakemba Mosque before he moved into an apartment in Surry Hills with a friend the next day.
He started off working as a chef in a local restaurant before he became a cab driver and hasn’t looked back.
He starts his shift everyday at 2pm at Liverpool Station and finishes work at 3am. He only takes one day off every week on Sundays.
He says he has no plans on retiring even though he’s eligible for his pension.
NSW Taxi Council Chief Executive Nick Abraham told Daily Mail cab drivers are encouraged to report incidents such as fair evasions and assaults to NSW Police.
Mr Abraham said drivers are provided with support services by the companies they work for and measures have been implemented to protect the safety of drivers.
‘Every single taxi that provides rank and hail work across NSW and Sydney by law must be fitted with a security camera,’ Mr Abraham said.
‘In the last six months there’s been around six prohibition notices issued to taxi companies because they’ve had non-complaint duress alarms or cameras … because of these safety issues.’
Figures from 13Cabs, which is ‘s largest taxi company, revealed 233 drivers were attacked or threatened by out of control passengers between January and August in 2023.
Melbourne had the highest rate of incidents with 381.
A NSW Police spokesman told Daily Mail all crimes that are committed should be reported to police.