Firings for driver-license bribes

More than 40 police officers from the vehicle administration bureau in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, have been sacked for requiring new drivers to pay a bribe if they wanted to pass their driver's test. Thirty-nine of the officers have returned graft totaling 21 million yuan ($3.36 million).

Liang Zhixiong, head of the Zhanjiang vehicle administration bureau, has been detained by the local Party discipline authority, which has verified that Liang took bribes totally 660,000 yuan. Liang will be handed over to judicial departments and may face criminal charges, the Nandu Daily reported on Monday.

Students attending most of the driving schools in the city were required to pay a 600 to 700 yuan gift under the name "examination fee" to the driving schools, which would pass the money to the examiners from the vehicle administration office under the Zhanjiang traffic police, according to the daily.

An employee with the publicity department of the Zhanjiang Party commission for discipline inspection confirmed Nandu's report but said he could not reveal more details. Calls by the Global Times to the office of the vehicle administrative bureau went unanswered.

"Some of the officers took bribes so frequently they cannot remember the amount of money they received," said an investigator from the discipline commission, adding that most examiners employed by the administration office were involved in bribe taking. The examiners also paid part of the bribe money to Liang, the investigator noted.

Bribing the instructors and examiners in order to pass the driver license examinations has become a common practice in recent years, especially in second and third-tier cities.

"The instructor would give hints to students saying that if they didn't pay the gift money they would fail to pass their driver's test. A friend of mine just took the exam and had to pay 1,000 yuan gift money," Li Xiangjun, a white-collar worker in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, told the Global Times.

In 2005, Li Jiang, the police chief of Zhejiang Province, complained that the driver license examination was so corrupt that even police officers had to bribe their peers at the vehicle administration office.

"A police officer told me that he was in a 10-head class, and no one would pass the exam if just one of them refuses to pay the 200 yuan gift money," Li said at a provincial traffic management meeting in January 2005, China News Service reported.

"The instructors' salary is linked to the number of students who pass the test. If my student doesn't pass, my salary will be reduced. So some coaches encourage their students to send gift money to examiners, and they can also fish out some profits in the process," a driving school instructor in Beijing surnamed Liang told the Global Times.

"But bribing the examiners is not common in Beijing because the vehicle administration office and driving schools are more strictly regulated," Liang said.