VietNamNet Bridge - About 70 people in Hai Thanh commune, Tinh Gia district of Thanh Hoa province gathered at the provincial police headquarters on November 7, asking the police to explain why their two dried anchovy trucks were seized.

Mobile policemen were mobilized to maintain the order.

According to Hai Thanh’s residents, there are nearly 30 dried anchovy processing enterprises in the commune. Each enterprise produces from 50 to 200 tons of dried anchovies a month to serve the local market and to export to China.

In the last one year, a man named Dung took control the truck services and the truck station in Hai Thanh. Accordingly, local people had to hire his container trucks and had to pay an additional VND6.2 million ($300) for each container, which is called the “highway fees”.

To avoid losses, some fishermen recently hired trucks from other sources and did not use the truck station in Tinh Gia, which is managed by Dung.

Since then, they faced a lot of problems in transporting dried anchovies as some local traffic policemen often stopped their trucks and seized their goods without any reason.

"We suspect that Dung colluded with the police to seize our goods to force us to continue using his guarded service,” an unnamed fisherman said.

On November 6, two container trucks carrying dried anchovies were stopped and seized by some police officers of the Thanh Hoa Economic Police Division on Highway 1A.

According to Hai Thanh’s people, these policemen seized the trucks without stating any reason and not making minutes. They also turned off the trucks and thus turned off the air conditioners in the trucks, which could damage the cargo. The police only asked the drivers to provide the phone numbers of the cargo owners to “work with”.

At the meeting with Hai Thanh’s people, leaders of Thanh Hoa province asked the Economic Police Division to immediately release the two container trucks and promised to investigate the case.

VNE