The acting police commissioner isn’t taking the “suai” sticker corruption allegations lightly. Yesterday, he swore that he would punish five of the top officers in the city if he sees the Doraemon stickers on vending carts in their jurisdictions.
The warning from Pol. Lt. Gen. Sanit Mahathavorn follows the breaking news yesterday when arrested migrant vendors revealed that they had been instructed to show Doraemon stickers to police if they were questioned about illegal vending. They explained that they (or their employers) had purchased the stickers with bribe money from corrupt officers as insurance against arrest, according to Thai PBS.
And the stickers were not just Doraemon designs, as originally thought. There were also stickers of dice and cars that had been purchased as insurance.
The population of migrant workers that may have purchased these stickers are thought to be from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos and often selling fruit or ice cream on the sidewalk.
The Department of Employment made a sweep of businesses in old town yesterday, looking for illegal migrant workers.
When they found three Burmese nationals selling soymilk on the street, the men showed dice stickers to the officers as protection against arrest, as they’d been instructed. The same thing happened nearby with two more Burmese nationals.
None of them had working papers and, because they did not know the exact identities of their Thai employers, they did not know exactly where the stickers had been purchased.
Employment officer Chaithat na Nakorn said that these and similar stickers were often shown to officials during inspections.
Pol. Lt. Gen. Sanit plans to call a meeting today for all police in Bangkok ordering them to take action on the matter. He noted that the case is technically in the jurisdiction of the Immigration department but that each local police station where the sticker corruption is occurring must get involved.
