TUOI
TRE - The
‘luxury’ sleeper buses of some transport firms may admit passengers doubling
its registered number of seats while running on highways in Vietnam. However,
the overcrowded vehicles fool traffic policemen and road inspectors year after
year.
Contrary
to its advertisement, which states that sleeper buses offer ‘five star service’
and ‘high quality,’ the reality of these vehicles is quite the opposite.
Except
for some well-known companies such as Phuong Trang, Mai Linh and Kumho that
transport passengers to and from all provinces in the country, transport firms
often violate traffic laws with overcrowded vehicles.
Although
Vietnamese authorities have managed to crack down on ‘xe dù’, which
is the name for unregistered passenger vehicles, the overcrowded ‘luxury
passenger coaches’ are by no means different from a ‘xe dù’ at
all.
The
cheating occurs publicly on highways and has fooled traffic policemen and road
inspectors for years.
Passengers
packed in like sardines
Tuoi
Tre (Youth)
newspaper journalists boarded a sleeper vehicle, labeled as a ‘five star
service,’ to experience this fact.
The two
aisles between three rows of sleeper are installed with new beds that can be
folded down to ram in more passengers.
On a
vehicle marked TL, around 20 passengers were jammed in the two aisles. They
even had no space to stretch their legs out.
The
beds on the aisles were only removed when authorities came to make periodic
checks. The beds are actually a piece of plywood, 40cm wide and covered with
leather on the front side.
On June
17, the Tuoi Tre reporters saw a 42-seat bus install ten more
seats along the aisles.
Although
the air-conditioning system was operated on the bus, passengers were still
sweating because of overcrowding.
Some
passengers began shouting loudly in protest as the driver stopped and ran to
add more people along the highway.
The Tuoi
Tre reporters witnessed an overcrowded sleeper bus that even stopped
on the Ho Chi Minh City – Trung Luong expressway to return passengers.
“The
driver ignored the safety of the lives of passengers when they stopped on the
expressway,” complained a passenger.
On June
13, the Tuoi Tre journalists got on a sleeper bus to travel
from Ho Chi Minh City to Ca Mau Province in the Mekong Delta. The bus operator
wrote on the ticket that it departed at 7:00 am but the vehicle was delayed an
hour and did not leave until 8:00 am.
It took
the bus an hour to drive along the 20km section from Mien Dong (Eastern) Bus
Station in Binh Thanh District to An Lac Roundabout in Binh Tan District
because the driver stopped to receive passengers along the way.
Ten
seats at the back of the overcrowded bus had no seat belt.
Some
sleeper buses even placed cargo below the beds along the aisles.
Because
the buses are on a stop-and-run drive to pick up passengers along highways,
tardiness is common with these vehicles of less-known transport firms.
‘More
checks’
The
Ministry of Transport has required provincial transport departments to enact a
comprehensive checking campaign targeting sleeper buses in March, said Le Hong
Viet, vice head of the inspection unit of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of
Transport.
Ho Chi
Minh City authorities have conducted checks four times this year. Of the 414
sleeper buses inspected, 174 were fined VND258.3 million (US$12,400) for
failing to meet standards, he added.
Transport
firms have followed a trend to invest more in new sleeper buses because
passengers prefer them to normal vehicles, according to Thuong Thanh Hai, vice
director of Mien Dong (Eastern) Bus Station – one of the three major bus
stations in the city, including Mien Tay (Western) Bus Station and Nga Tu Ga
Bus Station.
Currently,
the Mien Dong station has 1,244 sleeper buses with a total of 50,000 seats, but
the number is increasing every day, Hai noted.
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