Thromde at a glance! A reference to your location, why we need city addressing.

City addressing has been a topic of interest for quite a long time in Bhutan. Especially in the capital city, Thimphu and Phuentsholing which houses the two largest urban population in Bhutan. At present, streets are nameless and if there is, it is not uniform. Building doorways have no numbers. If there is, it is at the whims of the property owners and there are no prescribed standards prepared by the municipality. Residents have tried to make up for the street addressing by using the name of the local place name as landmarks and popular business establishments. However, the rapid urban development and population sprawl in these cities necessitated a proper city addressing system. Therefore, Thimphu Thromde in collaboration with the Bhutan Post initiated the first city addressing in the year 2008. Samdrup Jongkhar Thromde later adopted the same guidelines and implemented city addressing in the year 2011. However, the maintenance and update were not done (City Addressing Write up - Draft, 2020).

In view of the need to have a uniform addressing, Phuentsholing Thromde came up with a ‘Street Addressing Framework’ to implement street addressing in the year 2018. The framework however couldn’t be endorsed and was never implemented. The need for city addressing was never felt more than now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. To minimize contacts, movements were restricted, and services were home-delivered. However, the lack of proper address made it difficult for the service providers and health care workers to deliver the services. Phuentsholing Thromde City Addressing Guideline was thus prepared to tackle these limitations. The document was prepared by researching relevant international addressing practices and contextualizing to our context. Draft guidelines as prepared by the National Land Commission and Thimphu Thromde (City Addressing Write up - Draft, 2020) and Phuentsholing Thromde in the year 2018 were also reviewed for consistency and uniformity.