How many times have you wanted someone to ask you the reason behind your unhappiness?
Strangely, in Dubai, the police is going to do exactly that. This question among others will be a part of a new survey is asking the similar question to the users.
Hold on, they won’t ask and help you out with personal issues though.
The online poll started earlier this month is an effort to get Dubai into the top ten list of world’s happiest cities by 2021.
According to a report in The Independent, the simple survey has users choose between a frown, a smile and an unimpressed straight line. The police say they will call those who say they are unhappy, which puzzles some observers, including William Davies, a senior lecturer at the University of London who recently published the book “The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being.”
“This looks like to me an attempt to try to slightly frighten people into A) replying to the survey question and B) replying to say they’re happy because people really don’t want to be rung up by the police with the question: ‘Well, what’s your problem?’” Davies said.
“But I don’t know. Maybe there’s something sincere about it.”
The survey campaign adorns government offices across Dubai with small tablet computers placed next to civil servants allowing citizens to provide instant feedback on their experience.
Unveiled at a recent electronics show, the Dubai police sent text messages to a number of Dubai residents including a link to a webpage showing a picture of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with the Burj Khalifa tower behind him. It asked one question in English and Arabic: “Are you happy in Dubai?”
Dubai police, while not disclosing the total number of text messages sent in total, said the survey received more than two lakh responses in its first day, with 84% saying they were happy, 6% neutral and 10% unhappy.
Was that it?
Maj. Gen. Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Dubai’s police chief, told local media that his officers would randomly call a selection of those unhappy to ask what was upsetting them.
“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.
Ranked at 20 out of 158 countries surveyed in the United Nations’ 2015 World Happiness Report, the United Arab Emirates is the most happiest city in the Arab world.