JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Man­agers of Fire­pow­er and Fire One Fire­works, the two largest fire­works providers in the coun­try, have wel­comed the move to silent fire­works for In­de­pen­dence Day and promise to de­liv­er good en­ter­tain­ment.

Fire­pow­er lo­gis­tics man­ag­er Ash­maed Ghany said yes­ter­day that his com­pa­ny will pro­vide the night-sky en­ter­tain­ment in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do, as well as the syn­chro­nised drone show ac­com­pa­ny­ing the fire­works.

Ghany as­sured the pub­lic that the silent dis­play would not de­prive spec­ta­tors of a spec­tac­u­lar show.

“Silent doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean less­er. It’s go­ing to be beau­ti­ful. It’s go­ing to be dif­fer­ent,” Ghany said.

“I guess the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to ap­pease a wider cross-sec­tion of peo­ple, there’s no doubt about it. But from Fire­pow­er’s per­spec­tive, we are go­ing to do our best to en­sure that it looks spec­tac­u­lar and mem­o­rable. It’s our In­de­pen­dence!” he added.

While he de­clined to dis­close the cost, Ghany said his com­pa­ny was no novice at pro­duc­ing en­ter­tain­ment of such a mag­ni­tude.

Fire One Fire­works man­ag­ing di­rec­tor An­dre Abra­ham said it was the com­pa­ny’s cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure its prod­ucts could be en­joyed by every­one.

He said for the past sev­er­al years, his com­pa­ny has used a mix­ture of reg­u­lar and silent fire­works, with the ma­jor­i­ty be­ing silent.

Asked about calls for loud fire­works to be banned al­to­geth­er, Abra­ham said such a move could sim­ply in­crease black-mar­ket de­mand for nois­i­er al­ter­na­tives.

“We ac­tu­al­ly think we’ve had a net pos­i­tive im­pact on so­ci­ety be­cause if we com­plete­ly re­move the le­gal items that we are im­port­ing, then the black-mar­ket busi­ness will start to flour­ish again, and peo­ple will start bring­ing in scratch bombs and maybe go back to car­bide burst­ing and bam­boo.”

On CNC3 yes­ter­day, an­i­mal rights ac­tivist Delvin Gool­jar told The Morn­ing Brew host Ja­son Williams yes­ter­day that while he sup­ports Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion, the av­er­age per­son still has ac­cess to loud fire­works and he be­lieves this should al­so be ad­dressed.

Mean­while, Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day spoke with Asha Ali and Don­ny Nan­doo in Aranguez, both of whom said they want the noise.

For Nan­doo, the is­sue is that reg­u­lar fire­works are used on on­ly a few oc­ca­sions each year and there­fore should not be in­ter­fered with.

Ali said some peo­ple were mak­ing a prover­bial moun­tain out of a “fire­works mole­hill.”

For years, the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of T&T (ZSTT) has com­plained about the ef­fect of In­de­pen­dence Day fire­works on its an­i­mals. In 2019, fol­low­ing the death of Joey, an 18-month-old red kan­ga­roo, those calls in­ten­si­fied.

Guardian Me­dia sought com­ment from ZSTT pres­i­dent and zoo cu­ra­tor Nir­mal Bip­ta on the mat­ter yes­ter­day and was told the zoo would pro­vide a re­sponse with­in two days.

Guardian Me­dia first sought a com­ment two weeks ago, when De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge said the fire­works dis­play would be a mix­ture of reg­u­lar and silent fire­works.

At the time, Guardian Me­dia was told a re­sponse would be forth­com­ing af­ter the board met.

Mean­while, TTPS me­dia am­bas­sador ASP Owie Rus­sell warned that set­ting off fire­works out­side the au­tho­rised pe­ri­od or with­out a per­mit is a crim­i­nal of­fence pun­ish­able by fines rang­ing from $450 to $20,000 or a prison term of up to ten years.

“You are al­lowed to use your fire­works with­out a per­mit on a pub­lic hol­i­day be­tween 8 pm and 9 pm, and on De­cem­ber 31 be­tween 11.30 pm and 12.30 am on Jan­u­ary 1.

“Out­side of those pe­ri­ods, you re­quire a per­mit. Let me say and re­it­er­ate that all scratch bombs are banned.”