Tuesday 22 October 2013

Helsinki-Now most honest city in the world!!!

Growing up in Ghana,many young ones including myself were made to write essays titled:Honesty is the best policy.
However when one grows up we get to have the test of our integrity in diverse ways.The country is now bedeviled with news of alleged corruption in leadership,churches,and various sectors of our sociocultural life.
One city that caught my attention in recent times is Helsinki.What about them one may ask?                  A research conducted by Readers Digest magazine by dropping 192 wallets in 16 different cities around the world,Helsinki was found to be the city with most honest people. Each wallet dropped contained the equivalent of $50, plus a telephone number, a family photo, coupons and business cards.   
Helsinki. Finland’s capital city brought back 11 of the 12 “lost” wallets, which were left in parks, near shopping centres and on pavements.                               "Finns are naturally honest," said Lasse Luomakoski, a 27-year-old businessman who returned one of them. "We are a small, quiet, closely-knit community. We have little corruption, and we don't even run red lights."

Mumbai India came in close second with 9 of the 12 wallets returned, ahead of Budapest in Hungary, where 8 of 12 were returned.“I remember being in a car, when my dad noticed a wallet by the side of the road,” one 17 year old student explained. “When we reached the owner he was very grateful: Without the papers in the wallet he would have had to postpone his wedding which was to take place the very same day!”
The magazine also revealed however, a woman in her early sixties opened the wallet, and then entered a nearby building and never got back or got in touch.

New York also returned 8 out of 12 wallets, followed by Moscow and Amsterdam (7) and Berlin and Ljubljana (6).

Londoners returned 5 of the 12 wallets, alongside Warsaw in Poland.
The least honest city was Lisbon, which returned only 1 of the 12 wallets, just behind Madrid, where 2 were returned. The one wallet that was returned was not even returned by locals: they were a couple visiting from Holland.

In total, 47 per cent were returned. The surprising conclusions was that there is no set pattern to those who return lost wallets.

“Age could not be used in predicting whether a person is going to be honest or dishonest; young and old both kept or returned wallets; male and female were unpredictable; and comparative wealth seemed no guarantee of honesty.”

The bottom line? “There are honest and dishonest people everywhere.”
Can you just imaging what will happen in Accra-Ghana's capital? Your guess is as good as mine.Sign of the cross right?

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