DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein yes­ter­day de­clined to say what penal­ties await peo­ple who set off fire­works with­out a per­mit or out­side the re­strict­ed hours out­lined in leg­is­la­tion ex­pect­ed be­fore Par­lia­ment to­day. He in­stead urged the pub­lic to wait for the de­tails to be re­vealed dur­ing the de­bate, which should com­mence af­ter 1.30 pm when Par­lia­ment con­venes.

Un­der the pro­posed law, per­mits would be re­quired for all fire­works use ex­cept on pub­lic hol­i­days and New Year’s Eve. Even then, the win­dow would be nar­row – 8 pm to 9 pm on hol­i­days and 11.30 pm to 12.30 am on New Year’s Eve.

Fire­works would al­so be pro­hib­it­ed in sev­er­al sen­si­tive zones, in­clud­ing with­in a half-mile ra­dius of hos­pi­tals, air­ports, zoos, reg­is­tered an­i­mal shel­ters, live­stock farms, for­est re­serves and na­tion­al parks.

The bill pro­pos­es mak­ing breach­es a tick­etable of­fence and sets 18 as the min­i­mum age for a per­mit.

Speak­ing at Stollmey­er’s Cas­tle, where the min­istry is­sued li­cences to 36 mar­riage of­fi­cers, Ho­sein said the ob­jec­tive is to bal­ance the in­ter­ests of fire­works en­thu­si­asts with the needs of vul­ner­a­ble groups.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that en­force­ment will be chal­leng­ing.

“It’s go­ing to be some dif­fi­cul­ty in terms of re­sources. We un­der­stand what is hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go. But I think at that par­tic­u­lar point in time, we are still in a State of Emer­gency. I think the po­lice will play a greater role in terms of en­force­ment and so on go­ing for­ward. And I must tie in that point to the fixed penal­ty no­tices. It will be quite eas­i­er now for per­sons to be fined in terms of com­mit­ting breach­es of the law.”

He al­so ar­gued that the re­forms are long over­due.

“I can tell you civ­il so­ci­ety, an­i­mal rights ac­tivists, the el­der­ly, the hos­pi­tals have been call­ing for this reg­u­la­tion. There is reg­u­la­tion right now. It’s quite ar­cha­ic. So, what we’re do­ing is we’re mod­ernising.”

Ho­sein high­light­ed the abil­i­ty to is­sue fixed-penal­ty tick­ets as one of the key tools in­tend­ed to strength­en com­pli­ance, adding that the Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to ac­com­mo­date both groups – those who en­joy fire­works and those who dread them.

“So, there­fore you can charge peo­ple more ef­fi­cient­ly and you can have a bet­ter grasp of en­force­ment. You have with re­spect to the lim­it­ing of the hours and so on. And al­so, a pow­er is still vest­ed in terms of grant­i­ng the per­mits and so on. And those are some of the fac­tors that the Gov­ern­ment has weighed very care­ful­ly go­ing for­ward in terms of, while there are some peo­ple in so­ci­ety who en­joy fire­works, there’s some that don’t. But the gov­ern­ment is not go­ing to say yes or no.”

But one an­i­mal wel­fare or­gan­i­sa­tion is not con­vinced. Chair of the T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA), Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la, said the cur­rent laws are al­ready ig­nored and she ex­pects lit­tle change.

“In our view, fire­works should be tak­en out of the hands of pub­lic be­cause the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion does pro­hib­it the use of fire­works in towns...that is com­plete­ly ig­nored...our prob­lem with this leg­is­la­tion is that we feel that it can­not be en­forced.”

She said the TTSP­CA con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for night-time pub­lic dis­plays and for silent fire­works, which she not­ed are sig­nif­i­cant­ly qui­eter even as tra­di­tion­al ones be­come loud­er.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is al­so urg­ing pet own­ers to se­cure their an­i­mals ahead of ex­pect­ed fire­works and en­sure they are prop­er­ly tagged.