The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The police on the bicycles are now doing serious patrolling in the residential areas and in the town for the safety and well-being of residents. Apart from robberies they also are on the lookout for those people who have a tendency to smoke on the staircase of the buildings hampering the health of the people who walk by or stay ther. In the past few months Thimphu has seen a growing number of robberies whereby thieves break into houses which are locked during the day time when the residents are out for work.
This happening in part because Thimphu is the busiest city in Bhutan and most of the residents in Thimphu are either office goers or shop owners who don’t have people staying at home during the day. The police said that the “thieves” usually look under the doormats or inside flower pots to find the key to an apartment and eventually break the door when they cannot locate the key.
The social media has also seen people complaining about their belongings being stolen while the owners are in the office or in the market for a quick buy. Things have also been stolen from their parked cars after breaking the window of the car.
To counter all this the police has been recently surveying households and getting their say on what kind of problems they face and the regularity of gangs in their respective areas.
A housewife who resides in Norzin lam said that she can usually observe groups of young adults smoking in the stair case and it is difficult to approach them to not do it. “I just worry because I have two school going children and I don’t want them to be passively affected”.
The police said they are going house to house because this kind of situation is common; people don’t
want to go to police and complain because they don’t like anything to become a police matter and at the same time they cannot tell people to not smoke or have gang gatherings engaging in activities harmful or disturbing to others.
Apart from the robberies during the day time, the night life for many residents in town area is chaotic as they can hear people fighting or quarrelling on the streets as late as 3 a.m. Bhawana, a 25 year old private employee said that it is hard for her to get a good sleep as she is usually awakened by the noise of people singing or quarrelling in the middle of the night.
