Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

The EMA's par­ent min­istry, the new­ly-cre­at­ed Min­istry of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources, is aware of noise is­sues, and is mov­ing to ad­dress them. Ju­nior min­is­ter Ra­mona Ram­di­al said she lives in an area where the "noise cul­ture" is per­va­sive.

"As MP for Cou­va North, I have com­plaints that come to the of­fice, some­times on a dai­ly ba­sis, about the noise," she said.These in­clude com­plaints about fac­to­ry noise, bars, and cars. In her con­stituen­cy, a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem is res­i­dents con­vert­ing their premis­es to busi­ness places.

"Some­times I get e-mails at 2 am from my con­stituents, who say 'We called the Ch­agua­nas po­lice and noth­ing is hap­pen­ing, can you in­ter­vene?'"De­spite the fact that the EMA is the in­sti­tu­tion re­spon­si­ble for the en­vi­ron­ment, Ram­di­al said the bur­den of en­force­ment falls on the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, but "the po­lice them­selves are not very well ed­u­cat­ed as to their ju­ris­dic­tion."

She has spo­ken to se­nior of­fi­cers in Ch­agua­nas, who have been oblig­ing in re­spond­ing to noise com­plaints, but she ad­mits noise is not a pri­or­i­ty, and some­times, po­lice re­sources are stretched too thin to re­spond. An ex­am­ple of the rou­tine sub­ver­sion of the EMA's reg­u­la­tions is the re­quired test­ing of noise lev­els for an event for which a vari­a­tion has been grant­ed.

The res­i­dents say once the EMA per­son­nel do their tests to de­ter­mine the event's noise lev­els are with­in spec­i­fied lev­els and de­part, the mu­sic is im­me­di­ate­ly turned up. Lapratt pres­i­dent, Nag­ib Sha­keer, re­called that for one event, the EMA de­nied the vari­a­tion, and the pro­mot­er man­aged to get it re­versed by a vis­it to the EMA of­fice. De­spite sev­er­al re­quests dur­ing a two-week pe­ri­od, no one from the EMA would be in­ter­viewed for this ar­ti­cle.

The Lange Park res­i­dents' bat­tle to stop the noise from a night­club in their area was in­struc­tive in many ways. Mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion agreed that the le­gal and po­lit­i­cal sys­tems seem to work for the pro­mot­ers.

About 4,000 peo­ple live in Lange Park, but a core of about 60 peo­ple be­long to the res­i­dents' as­so­ci­a­tion. Many res­i­dents pre­fer to suf­fer the in­con­ve­nience of noise and make no com­plaint, and this en­cour­ages the noise­mak­ers.

Lapratt mem­bers al­so spoke of pub­lic of­fi­cials who tried to dis­suade them from go­ing to court, be­cause of con­nec­tions with the pro­mot­ers, and like every­one else in­ter­viewed for this ar­ti­cle, they agreed the EMA was "tooth­less."

The as­so­ci­a­tion cit­ed as one of the is­sues they en­coun­tered the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion among re­lat­ed in­ter­ests, like po­lice and fire ser­vices, the EMA, lo­cal gov­ern­ment, and res­i­dents. To rem­e­dy this, said Ram­di­al, the min­istry has de­cid­ed to em­bark on an "ed­u­ca­tion aware­ness" dri­ve, in­volv­ing the min­istry, EMA and the TTPS, to ed­u­cate the po­lice on their ju­ris­dic­tion and en­forc­ing the rules.

The EMA, the min­is­ter said, al­so in­tend­ed to do a se­ries of work­shops in schools, aimed at stu­dents. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she said, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Po­lice Unit at­tached to the EMA was un­der­staffed, but the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Jack Warn­er, had agreed to give the unit 100 more of­fi­cers.

These com­mu­ni­ca­tions and ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes, said Ram­di­al, are ex­pect­ed to be­gin in March. She hopes that by the end of that month, some change should be vis­i­ble.

But Ram­di­al is aware of the ma­jor fail­ing of po­lit­i­cal and non-po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions: "Our ma­jor prob­lem is en­force­ment," she said. Some­times the best in­ten­tions and the best poli­cies fail be­cause of non-im­ple­men­ta­tion or lax en­force­ment at the lo­cal lev­el. She hopes with the ma­jor re­form of lo­cal gov­ern­ment, now un­der way, these ar­eas will im­prove. As to the treat­ment of po­lice non-re­spon­sive­ness to com­plaints, ASP Joanne Archie, pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer of the TTPS, out­lined a few steps mem­bers of the pub­lic can take. "Every re­port made to the po­lice must be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and record­ed in the sta­tion di­ary," she said.

Cit­i­zens who are not sat­is­fied with the re­sponse of the desk of­fi­cer can ask to speak to the se­nior of­fi­cer in the sta­tion, who would then be com­pelled to act. Cit­i­zens are al­so en­ti­tled to a re­ceipt from the po­lice of­fi­cer record­ing the com­plaint.

Archie ad­mits the dif­fi­cul­ty of prov­ing these com­plaints. She says the TTPS is con­sid­er­ing putting cam­eras in po­lice sta­tions, but cit­i­zens are not en­ti­tled to take record­ing equip­ment in­to the po­lice sta­tion.

The re­course cit­i­zens have when po­lice fail to re­spond to com­plaints or to is­sue re­ceipts, she said, in­cludes fil­ing a com­plaint with the TTPS or with the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA). Sep­a­rate from the ex­ter­nal PCA, the TTPS has its own in­ter­nal com­plaints au­thor­i­ty, and re­ports against po­lice of­fi­cers are in­ves­ti­gat­ed and heard by a tri­bunal.The penal­ties for of­fi­cers could in­clude loss of pay and de­mo­tion. Archie said she is aware that po­lice of­fi­cers have been dis­ci­plined for fail­ing to re­spond to re­ports.