After a Facebook submit exhibiting a motorbike checkpoint accused police of destroying tourism, the Phuket Provincial Police fired again. The submit was made in Thai within the Phuket Sandbox – SHA Plus Facebook group on Sunday and went viral because it blamed traffic police for robbing foreigners now that vacationers are returning.
ผลไม้ของฝาก was accompanied by pictures of a site visitors checkpoint right by the vacationer hotspot of Bangla Road, at The Kitchen restaurant next to the TaiPan nightclub on Rath-U-Thit 200 Pi Road. It mentioned that police there have been robbing vacationers by stopping them and checking that they have been following site visitors legal guidelines.
The Phuket Provincial Police responded to the publish by saying that they had been just doing their job in enforcing visitors laws. They asked the original poster or others to report any circumstances where foreigners have been being robbed because the publish claimed. They stated that site visitors checks are a traditional a part of their job with the intention of increasing highway security and lowering site visitors accidents.
“Some vacationers are not familiar with the roads and have no idea the site visitors legal guidelines, and because of totally different legal guidelines, traditions and cultures, this may cause accidents and harm to the motorists themselves or others and the property of the vacationers themselves.”
The police additionally went additional to defend themselves and launched statistics of traffic stops to point out that they are not biased or focusing on foreigners of their checkpoints. In truth, the statistics they launched showed that a higher share of Thai tourists had been stopped and charged with site visitors offences versus foreign vacationers.
They showed that zero.67% of the 374,117 domestic vacationers recorded as entering Phuket from October sixteen to November 23 had been stopped and cited for visitors offences, a total of two,507 Thai folks. In the same time interval, 129 of the 36,549 worldwide travellers who entered Phuket were cited for breaking visitors laws, which is simply 0.43%.
The post also cited pre-Covid-19 statistics of 4,785 minor injuries, 117 severe accidents, and 129 deaths in site visitors accidents in Phuket in 2019. They urged all individuals, Thai and foreign, to be protected and observe traffic guidelines. With the return of tourists in growing numbers though, many are reporting elevated police presence and a few declare international tourists are targeted in areas like Chalong, Cherng Talay, Kamala, and Rawai..