Obese Traffic Cops Reassigned: Hanoi Police Department Bans Big Rude Cops in Vietnam To 'Cast A Friendly Light'

Obese traffic cops are soon to be reassigned to desk jobs, barred from working on the streets of Vietnam's capital.

"Little officers, or those with too big a belly will be moved to work in offices instead of guiding traffic and settling violations," Colonel Dao Vinh Thang, the head of the Hanoi Traffic Police Department, told a local newspaper, according to Reuters.

The Hanoi police are trying to clean up their image as the department makes a list of "worst offenders" to be reassigned. All traffic officers on duty are required to carry a book on the code of conduct to remind them that they should behave properly.

"We have set up five inspection groups to monitor the behavior of the police officers. The teams have detected and handled 23 cases of violation and three policemen were suspended from road patrol to do paperwork," Thang said.

Vietnam's traffic police were frequently voted "most corrupt" agency in a recent study commissioned by the World Bank.

"This is one of the strategies to build up the image of Hanoi's traffic police in 2013," Thang told AFP.

The officers in Vietnam were banned from wearing sunglasses in 2011 and even hired female officers in January to improve the image and to "cast a friendly light."

Similar measures have taken place in other South Asian country for overweight policemen in Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as Britain, in recent years.