In early April, a taxi driver of Trung Viet Taxi was detected to install an additional chip to control the taxi meter.
With this chip, if the car runs at the speed of 20 km an hour, the charge will be VND400,000 ($20) for 1km of road.

All sorts of tricks

Specifically, on April 28 and May 10, two drivers of Trung Viet and Thanh Nga taxi firms were accused of overcharging foreign tourists.

Shortly thereafter, the authorities offered apology to the victims and asked the taxi firms to punish and to tighten control over their taxi drivers to improve the quality of taxi services in Hanoi.

The concern is although the relevant agencies have strengthened inspection and punishment over taxi service-related violations but the taxi operation in Hanoi has not been improved.

According to the Hanoi Department of Transportation, there are over 117 taxi firms in the city, with a total of 17,000 vehicles and 2,000 drivers.

However, through the regular inspection, the Hanoi Transport Department found out that there are a few firms operating seriously and focusing on building their brands and improving their services.

Mr. Hoang Van Manh, deputy chief inspector of the Hanoi Department of Transportation said that only through a preliminary inspection of taxi services, inspectors discovered a series of "tricks" to adjust the meters to "pickpocket" passengers.

According to many, in the inspection on May 8, transportation inspectors detected at least five cases of fare cheating of the drivers of Ngoc Linh, Huong Lam, Song Hong and Trung Viet taxi firms. Some drivers used cell phones to control the meters or opened the meters to adjust the chip in order to increase fares.
 

Dodge the law to overcharge passengers

It is too difficult for Hanoi to manage too many taxi firms.

According to Manh, taxi firms in Hanoi develop in very small scales. HCM City has only 31 taxi firms with 15,000 vehicles while Hanoi has up to 117 taxi firms with only 17,000 cars.

On average, each taxi firm in HCM City has at least a few hundreds of cars while with just 5-10 cars, a taxi firm can be established in Hanoi.

In this situation, Manh said that Hanoi should slash the number of tax firms to 50-60 to facilitate management because at present, many taxi firms do not operation but sell their shares or hire their brands to other firms.

"This situation not only causes difficulties for management but also create conditions for tax evasion because the Enterprise Law, the government and the Ministry of Transportation’s rules do not prohibit this," Sang emphasized.

Mr. Thach Nhu Sy, Deputy Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Transportation, said that after inspections, a lot of violations of taxi firms were discovered but the state agencies could not put taxi firms in orders because they have many "tricks" to dodge the law.

According to Sy, when asking for business registration, taxi firms must register the number of cars. Some firms are licensed though they have several cars of their own and the remaining are leased cars. The loose control of vehicles of taxi firms facilitates taxi firms to dodge tax.

On May 13, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Hoang Tuan Anh asked all provinces and cities to set up a hotline to receive tourists’ information on cheating, overcharging, etc.

Vietnamnet