In an era when mod­ern life grows in­creas­ing­ly loud, the need for peace and qui­et has nev­er been more es­sen­tial. Noise pol­lu­tion—of­ten dis­missed as a mi­nor in­con­ve­nience—has been iden­ti­fied by the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion as one of the lead­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal threats to hu­man health and a risk fac­tor for meta­bol­ic, psy­chophys­i­o­log­i­cal, birth, and cog­ni­tive dis­or­ders. Its con­se­quences are far from triv­ial.

Against this back­drop, the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­cent moves to con­front noise pol­lu­tion rep­re­sent not on­ly sound gov­er­nance but an act of pub­lic-health stew­ard­ship.

A good night’s sleep is one of the fun­da­men­tal pil­lars of hu­man well-be­ing. Noise in­tru­sion—whether from loud mu­sic, ve­hic­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ty, bark­ing dogs, or in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions—can frag­ment sleep, dis­rupt cir­ca­di­an rhythms, and lead to chron­ic fa­tigue. For fam­i­lies, stu­dents, shift work­ers, and the el­der­ly, peace­ful night­time con­di­tions are not a lux­u­ry; they are a ne­ces­si­ty.

Noise pol­lu­tion is a solv­able prob­lem. For cit­i­zens long ac­cus­tomed to sleep­less nights and unan­swered com­plaints, the Gov­ern­ment’s new stance of­fers hope—a re­minder that good gov­er­nance of­ten be­gins with en­sur­ing peo­ple can rest. It al­so sig­nals an un­der­stand­ing that na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment must in­clude not on­ly phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, but the qual­i­ty of life with­in the spaces we in­hab­it.

One week ago, the Prime Min­is­ter de­clared the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my in south Trinidad a pro­hib­it­ed zone for fetes. Dif­fer­ent lim­its were soon im­posed on oth­er sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. This de­ci­sion is not an at­tack on cul­ture, as some crit­ics have claimed, but a nec­es­sary step to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties from ex­ces­sive noise and to safe­guard the coun­try’s sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

Even be­fore as­sum­ing of­fice, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar pledged to ad­dress noise pol­lu­tion. At a UNC meet­ing, she re­marked, “When UNC wins, our men­tal health wins. There has been a pro­lif­er­a­tion of noise pol­lu­tion em­a­nat­ing from homes and from fetes, bars and clubs, in­tol­er­a­ble to the per­sons liv­ing near­by. The UNC will amend the noise pol­lu­tion laws to pro­tect your men­tal health in these noisy res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hoods and busi­ness­es. The sys­tem of grant­i­ng bar li­cences and par­ty li­cences will be changed.”

Her con­cerns are sup­port­ed by Ude­cott chair­man Shankar Bidaisee, who high­light­ed the “sig­nif­i­cant wear and tear and dam­age” to the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, not­ing that the fa­cil­i­ty costs near­ly $15 mil­lion a year to main­tain, while rev­enue from fetes is neg­li­gi­ble. His com­ments echo a long­stand­ing is­sue. In 2009, then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning al­so banned fetes at sport­ing venues, cit­ing in­fra­struc­tur­al dam­age and fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Noise com­plaints from near­by res­i­dents are not new. On June 28, 2019, MP David Lee plead­ed in Par­lia­ment on be­half of con­stituents who had been “cry­ing out for help” over noise from the sta­di­um. He not­ed that the man­ag­ing en­ti­ty re­peat­ed­ly re­mind­ed the gov­ern­ment that the fa­cil­i­ty was in­tend­ed for sports, not en­ter­tain­ment.

At the time, then com­mu­ni­ca­tions min­is­ter Stu­art Young said that then-plan­ning min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is would be asked to have the EMA at­tend to the sit­u­a­tion. Yet, six years lat­er, de­ci­sive ac­tion has come on­ly un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The new pol­i­cy goes fur­ther: all fetes and par­ties at Min­istry of Sport fa­cil­i­ties must be­gin no ear­li­er than noon and end by 10 pm. The Cit­i­zens Against Noise Pol­lu­tion in T&T wel­comed the move, stat­ing, “Reg­u­lat­ing noise is not an­ti-cul­ture. It is re­spon­si­ble, mod­ern, and al­ready stan­dard across the Caribbean and the world,” not­ing that Caribbean car­ni­vals abroad op­er­ate un­der strict noise laws.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the name of our crick­et­ing icon has be­come as­so­ci­at­ed not on­ly with sport­ing ex­cel­lence but al­so with noise.

On Jan­u­ary 25 2012, for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing raised con­cerns about loud par­ties at Bri­an Lara’s La­dy Chan­cel­lor res­i­dence. He not­ed that noise com­plaints were a year-round is­sue, not lim­it­ed to the Car­ni­val sea­son, and crit­i­cised the te­dious process of seek­ing court in­ter­ven­tion to stop events.

“Noise is a per­pet­u­al prob­lem,” he said. “The sys­tem is set up in such a way that it is caus­ing us to be the vil­lains rather than the vic­tors.” He al­so cit­ed sim­i­lar chal­lenges with bars in Wood­brook and St James. He said, “We can­not al­ways be go­ing to the Mag­is­trates’ Court to stop the grant­i­ng of bar li­cences. We have done this lots of times. We need a pol­i­cy where we can change this and make changes to the law.”

Per­haps Lee Sing could as­sist the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion in its re­newed push to bring or­der and bal­ance to the na­tion’s sound­scape.

By recog­nis­ing that peace and qui­et are fun­da­men­tal to pub­lic health, the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en a nec­es­sary step to­ward im­prov­ing the na­tion­al qual­i­ty of life. T&T can cel­e­brate its cul­ture with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the well-be­ing of its peo­ple.