Authorities in a district of Ho Chi Minh City have been piloting a scheme in which residents can pay their traffic fines via the post office, taking less time and at relatively low cost.

The government has also approved the proposal of the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group to carry out payment of traffic fines through their post offices, the Ministry of Information and Communications said.

According to the new procedure, residents will first go to local police stations to receive the sanction from police officers, then pay their fines to post office employees working at the stations, before coming back to the desk of the sanctioning officers to retrieve their suspended driver’s license and related documents.

In accordance with the old regulation, violators of traffic laws are required to pay financial penalties at a local bank or a branch of the Vietnam State Treasury after receiving the sanction decision, and then head back to police stations to receive their documents.

This process usually took quite a while to finish due to long queues at local banks or state treasury branches, P., a citizen residing in Cu Chi District, said.

“I had to spend an entire morning to complete my payment and was forced to wait until the afternoon shift at the police station had started in order to complete the process and have my driver’s license returned,” P. recalled.

The new procedure, however, took him only 10 minutes to finish and the cost of service is cheap, at only VND15,000 (US$0.67), the man explained.

The new process was piloted in Cu Chi in December 2015, with the local post office receiving payment of over 720 traffic violations with fines worth a total of about VND500 million ($22,405), said a representative of the Cu Chi Post Office.

Almost 100 percent of the fines were related to traffic offenses in the district and were paid via the service at the local post office in January 2016, the representative added.

It is not mandatory for citizens to follow the new procedure, Colonel Nguyen Van Cuong, deputy chief of the local police department, said, adding that they could still pay their traffic fines the old-fashioned way.

The new payment method is recommended as it overcomes the shortcomings of the previous regulation; traveling between police stations and local banks, treasury and long waiting lines at each facility, Col. Cuong elaborated.

“Since the implementation of the new service, locals have also stopped complaining about having to pay extra money to some intermediaries in order for their payment to be processed quickly,” the colonel added.

In addition, people in poor living conditions will not have to pay the service charge to the post office, he said.

Tran Ngoc Kim, an official at the Ho Chi Minh City Post Office, stated that he would review the results of the pilot phase and discuss with authorities how to execute the new procedure in other districts of the city.

The new procedure is expected to be implemented in District 10 this month by the Ho Chi Minh City Post Office and Department of Transport, Kim added.

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