Kali­fa Clyne

While there has been a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in pro­mot­ers and fete or­gan­is­ers ap­ply­ing for noise vari­a­tion li­cences, there has al­so been an in­crease in com­plaints to the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) re­gard­ing noise lev­els. This was re­vealed by EMA's cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Tisha Mara­jh dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Mara­jh said while vari­a­tions were ap­plied for through­out the year, the num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions were am­pli­fied dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son. She said the pub­lic was be­com­ing more aware of the role of the EMA in terms of noise lev­els. "We are try­ing to find a way to deal with com­plaints on a one-on-one lev­el," said Mara­jh said. She added that the EMA had met with the Wood­brook Res­i­dents As­so­ci­a­tion, venue own­ers, pro­mot­ers and po­lice of­fi­cers to deal with com­plaints.

She said while the EMA had the re­quired leg­is­la­tion for en­force­ment of noise pol­lu­tion rules, so did po­lice and so the or­gan­i­sa­tion was work­ing close­ly with law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. "Un­der the noise pol­lu­tion con­trol rules, the EMA must have a read­ing of noise lev­els for over half an hour be­fore any­thing can be done," said Mara­jh. She added, how­ev­er, that un­der the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, of­fi­cers could shut down an event if it be­came a nui­sance.

Mara­jh said the EMA had is­sued sev­er­al no­tices of vi­o­la­tions to Car­ni­val events and re­mained watch­ful as the sea­son winds down. Mara­jh re­vealed that on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, the EMA would be con­duct­ing a joint ex­er­cise with the po­lice to as­cer­tain stan­dard noise lev­els dur­ing the two-day fes­ti­val.