Dubai cops want to phone public to see why they’re unhappy

Receiving a phone call from the police out of the blue may be disconcerting. However, Dubai is getting officers to call members of the public who are unhappy to establish the reasons why, according to AP.

Dubai wants to move up the rankings of the world’s happiest cities and back into the top 10 by 2021. The city launched an online survey earlier in October aimed at finding out what the public does and doesn’t like. 

Dubai police sent text messages to residents in the city. There was just one question in Arabic and English: ‘Are you happy in Dubai?’ 

Law enforcers reported that 84 percent said they were happy, 6 percent said they were indifferent, while 10 percent were unhappy. The government said they received around 200,000 responses in just the first day, but refused to say how many text messages they sent out.

However, Dubai’s police chief, Major General Khamis Mattar Al-Mazeina, says they will now go one step further, by randomly calling those who stated they were unhappy with the aim of trying to find out why. 

“If the matter is under our jurisdiction, we will help them with it, but if it has to do with another government entity we will forward the issue to the concerned department,” he said, as cited by AP. But he said police would be unable to “try and solve personal issues.”