The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) is viewed by the pub­lic as be­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion to deal with the chron­ic prob­lem of noise in the coun­try. The EMA, un­der the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules (NPCR), as­sists in man­ag­ing noise pol­lu­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but the NPCR is cer­tain­ly not the on­ly leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing noise. Un­der the NPCR, max­i­mum lev­els of sounds are pre­scribed for dif­fer­ent zones (in­dus­tri­al, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive and gen­er­al ar­eas). Al­so un­der the NPCR, if a fa­cil­i­ty in­tends to breach those lim­its, (for which ex­emp­tions do not ap­ply), a vari­a­tion can be ap­plied for and is­sued by the EMA. Once a Vari­a­tion is is­sued, the EMA can mon­i­tor to en­sure com­pli­ance by us­ing a sound lev­el me­ter to ver­i­fy deci­bel lev­els.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor/ chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the EMA, Dr Joth Singh said: "The En­vi­ron­men­tal Po­lice Unit (EPU) of the EMA, has been work­ing to con­trol noise un­der the NPCR, how­ev­er, they have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing more im­me­di­ate suc­cess when act­ing as reg­u­lar po­lice of­fi­cers and ap­ply­ing the oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion which gov­ern noise in the coun­try." Singh said some of these oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion in­clud­ed the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, the The­atres and Dance Hall Act and Reg­u­la­tions, the Liquor Li­cens­es Act and the Pub­lic Hol­i­days and Fes­ti­vals Act. He ex­plained that al­though the NPCR pro­vides some re­lief to noise, the re­lief is not im­me­di­ate since the rules re­quire that noise from an ac­tiv­i­ty be mea­sured over pre­scribed time­frames to de­ter­mine a breach.

He fur­ther ex­plained that nui­sance is­sues of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with noisy bars and clubs, such as uri­na­tion on peo­ple's prop­er­ty, traf­fic con­ges­tion, van­dal­ism and vi­o­lence, can be im­me­di­ate­ly dealt with by any mem­ber of the Po­lice Ser­vice un­der the pieces of leg­is­la­tion men­tioned above. Dr Singh sup­port­ed a struc­tured and col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach for deal­ing with the noise and nui­sance is­sues util­is­ing the NPCR and the oth­er pieces of leg­is­la­tion avail­able to the Po­lice Ser­vice. He al­so stat­ed that al­though pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives played a crit­i­cal role in in­flu­enc­ing peo­ple's at­ti­tudes to­wards noise, he firm­ly be­lieved en­force­ment of the laws was vi­tal.