The municipal administration has said that the controversial toll station set up on Hanoi Highway was not doing anything illegal.

It cited many documents approving the collection by the government, the Finance Ministry and contracts between the committee and HCMC Infrastructure Investment Co. (CII) that has been collecting the toll for the last eight years to recover the construction cost of Dien Bien Phu Street.

However, the association said they had not questioned whether the station was legal or not but whether the station has been charging the right vehicles, as many vehicles who have been forced to pay the toll fees do not use the Dien Bien Phu Street, but Nguyen Huu Canh.

Tran Quang Phuong, director of the city Transport Department and member of the committee, referred to a longer Dien Bien Phu Street that includes a segment several dozen meters long between Saigon Bridge and Nguyen Huu Canh Street that any vehicle has to travel through to go from the downtown area to the Hanoi Highway.

Even based on that argument, at least vehicles that traveled from the outlying District 2 are being wrongly charged, the association said.

The transportation companies had also charged that CII had recently moved the station deliberately to collect toll fees from thousands of additional vehicles a day, including trucks coming from the Cat Lai port, earning hundreds of millions of dong in extra income.

However, Phuong said the station was moved with the city government’s approval in order to carry out more infrastructure projects on the highway.

As long as the station is still located on Hanoi Highway, there was nothing wrong with its location, he said.

Although the People’s Committee said that CII is only allow to collect VND1 trillion (current US$56 million) from the station according to the contract it has signed, CII’s finance report in 2008 listed higher earnings, and also mentioned that “the city Transport Department has allowed moving the station so that CII can earn more in coming years.”

Source: Thanh Nien