Chhimi Dema 

Police alleged people travelling from Covid-19 high-risk areas of providing wrong information while registering online in the checkpost management system (CPMS) to avoid a week’s mandatory quarantine.

Samdrupjongkhar, Sarpang, Dagana, Chukha and Samtse are identified as high-risk areas.

Lieutenant Colonel Ngawang Dorji of the police planning and research division said that people provided false information, claiming to be travelling from high-risk to another high-risk area, which did not require individuals to quarantine, even if they were travelling to low-risk areas.

He cited examples of how there were incidences where people travelling from Lhamoizingkha in Dagana would register Phuentsholing thromde as their destination in the system.

“People would then stay in Gedu without proceeding to Phuentsholing and register in the CPMS from Gedu and travel to Thimphu,” he said. “After incidences like that, we shared details of the travellers with Phuentsholing police to validate.”

According to the officer, people travelling from Phuentsholing take shortcuts and make arrangements with taxi drivers to pick them above Rincheding. “We had to set up CPMS checkpost at Kamji,” he said.

Ngawang Dorji appealed the public to be responsible and comply with the directives of the government.

CPMS was initiated last month to record accurate data on movement of vehicles and individuals in the country.

Initially, there were challenges of congestion in the checkpoints, as many travellers did not register before travelling, which caused a long queue of vehicles at the checkpoints.

Another challenge was network connectivity, according to police. “Network clogs when people who did not register uses the system at a time,” Ngawang Dorji said. “CPMS is now linked to fibre optic of the government network to resolve that problem.”

There are 32 checkpoints to validate the CPMS registration.

As of yesterday, about 7,300 vehicles and 15,000 people registered in CPMS to travel from high-risk areas to low-risk areas. About 7,500 vehicles and 12,700 people registered to travel from low risk to high-risk areas. It also recorded about 295, 274 vehicles and 922,144 commuters travelling in the country as of Tuesday.

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