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Obese traffic cops reassigned in Vietnam: Short, rude, or obese traffic cops will be reassigned to another position in Hanoi.
A traffic policewoman directs traffic at an intersection in downtown Hanoi on March 6, 2013. Short or obese policemen will be banned from traffic duty in Vietnam's capital Hanoi and given office jobs in a bid to improve the force's public image, police said. (Hoang Dinh Ham/AFP/Getty Images)
Authorities in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi will reassign obese, abusive, or short traffic police officers, preventing them from working on the streets. They will be assigned desk jobs instead.
“Little officers, or those with too big a belly will be moved to work in offices instead of guiding traffic and settling violations,” Colonel Dao Vinh Thang, the head of the Hanoi Traffic Police Department, told a local newspaper, according to Reuters.
The move is meant to improve the outward image projected across the capital of the communist-ruled country. Vietnam’s traffic police were voted the “most corrupt” agency in a recent study commissioned by the World Bank, according to AFP.
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“This is one of the strategies to build up the image of Hanoi’s traffic police in 2013,” Thang told AFP.
Overweight officers will now be forced to take part in physical training. “It is necessary for officers to undergo regular physical training,” he added.
Thang also said that teams of inspectors will be deployed to monitor police behavior on the street.
“We have set up five inspection groups to monitor the behavior of the police officers. The teams have detected and handled 23 cases of violation and three policemen were suspended from road patrol to do paperwork,” Thang said, according to the Vietnamnet website.
In 2011, officers in Vietnam were banned from wearing sunglasses or hiding behind trees or other objects to ambush motorists to get fines, according to the BBC.
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