Bribe-taking on Major Highways-festering public discontent

Bribe-taking on major highways remains a persistent bugbear staining authority figures and festering public discontent.
Around the period of the Tet (Lunar New Year), newspaper correspondents staked out at major highways that have drawn notoriety for the cowboy methods of traffic police and discovered that transgressions have reached a zenith.
Officials took bribes and permitted passage to vehicles crammed with an inordinate number of passengers or overloaded trucks goods.
Such clandestine activities, in fact, have become routine for both drivers and traffic police, especially during the holiday time when inflated kickbacks reap a “bountiful harvest” for these scheming perpetrators.
HCMC hotbed
Bribe-taking traffic police always capitalize on the section of Dien Bien Phu Street in Binh Thanh District linking Ho Chi Minh City to neighboring provinces to extract fares from traffic violators without filling out appropriate documentation of wrongdoings.
On a day in late January, we spied on the Dien Bien Phu-Mai Thi Luu T-junction and witnessed three traffic policemen “diligently” receiving money from infringing drivers.
A truck was whistled in; it stopped to donate a sum to the official and then went ahead.
No document acknowledging the violation was written up.
Other trucks with HCMC license plates subsequently took turns to offer corresponding amounts to police at this junction, again without any written citations.
The police even maximized opportunities to rake in kickbacks from motorbike riders, collecting VND50,000-100,000 (US$3.13-$6.26) from three offending drivers.
Two days later, correspondents revisited the intersection and discovered the same occurrence happening.
Cowboy highways
The National Highway 17 linking HCMC to southeastern provinces and the Central Highlands is regarded as a lucrative location for bribe-taking policemen considering the large number of trucks transporting goods, particularly on the threshold of Tet.
A truck driver revealed that there are around 20 “verification” checkpoints working around the clock stretching from Binh Duong to Kon Tum provinces.
Accompanying a convoy of trucks from HCMC to the mountainous province of Dak Lak on the night of January 16, we uncovered a circuit of bribe transactions along the ride.
Arriving in Binh Phuoc Province, 128 kilometers north of HCMC, a truck in the convoy was stopped by a traffic policeman.
The driver immediately disembarked and delivered a VND50,000 note, kept hidden in a book, to the official.
The kickback was however, refused, with the authority figure demanding an additional 50,000-note to let the truck go.
The atmosphere progressively bustled as more convoys passed through the checkpoint, each truck stopping over to pay the on-duty policemen every one or two minutes.
Around 50 trucks paused at the checkpoint to fulfill their “duties” during the hour, with police even pulling them over for no particular reason.
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