You are in the wrong business! From the Post
(May 22, 2003): Gangs controlling motorcycle taxis in Bangkok earn
at least 100 million baht a month from fees imposed on more than 1,800
motorcycle-taxi queues.
The Post gets people at a motorcycle taxi stand on Soi Charansanitwong
45 to go on record stating extorted money goes to the police. However,
the last part of The Nation's article
(May 23, 2003) tells of another drama going on at the Soi Charansanitwong
45 stand: Meanwhile, police said they would seek an arrest warrant
for an underworld figure who allegedly threatened to take over a motorcycle-taxi
stand from a businesswoman on Soi Charansanitwong 45... Metropolitan
Police Bureau deputy commissioner Maj-General Chakthip Kunchorn na
Ayutthaya said that to obtain an arrest warrant, police needed three
witnesses to state that Narong had threatened Sompot.
While the Post reports the solution to mafia payoffs is a government
plan to register the cyclists, The Nation is already reporting
the next step in the saga: Motorcycle-taxi drivers who flocked
to district offices to register their businesses under a government
plan to free them from "influential figures" came away disappointed
yesterday when they discovered that the registration forms had not
been written... It then states about 100 motorcyclists drove to
parliament to protest this inability to register.
Oddly, the Post article
(May 23, 2003) also reports a protest of about 100 motorcyclists,
but instead of protesting the government, the Post claims the
gathering was to show their support for the government campaign
against gangsters who extort money from them... The protest ended
when a senior police officer spoke to them and convinced them to go
back to work.
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