Prime Minister Hun Sen stepped up his recent crackdown on corruption this weekend, pledging to fire any government official caught using an illegal checkpoint to extort money.
“Now any soldier, any policeman, anyone that creates illegal checkpoints, they will be dismissed from their jobs without forgiveness if they are arrested,” Hun Sen said Saturday at the opening of a road project in Pursat province.
Last week 53 military police, police officers and civil servants were detained for using checkpoints along main roads into Phnom Penh to extort money. Some of those detained were cleared, but national Military Police Commander Sao Sokha ordered those accused under his command to clean toilets and build garages as punishment, and to attend a law course.
In the future, if a high-ranking official orders a checkpoint to be set up, the official will be sent to court, Hun Sen said. But those who run the checkpoints will simply be fired.
Hun Sen also asked provincial and district officials to patrol roads in their areas once or twice a month, looking for illegal checkpoints, and ordered the heads of military and national police to make swift arrests.
“We have too many employees,” Hun Sen said. “If they do illegal things, fire them. It’s easy. Cut them from the payroll.”
For the most part, Hun Sen said, military police, police and civil servants are working hard to create a good government. “Among 100 men of each unit, there is only one bad guy,” he said.
Illegal checkpoints have long been Cambodia’s most visible sign of corruption.
“If you allow them to extort money from people traveling on the road, the people…will curse me,” Hun Sen said.
