So­cial ac­tivism group The Can­dle­light Move­ment (CLM) is wel­com­ing the progress be­ing made to­ward cit­i­zens be­ing able to ob­tain pep­per spray as a tool of de­fence.

On Tues­day, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said re­tail­ers of pep­per spray could be­gin sub­mit­ting ap­pli­ca­tions from Au­gust 1 and ap­pli­ca­tions for per­mits for in­di­vid­u­als be­gin on Au­gust 30.

But CLM PRO Kan­dace Bharath-Na­hous yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia the pace of progress is still too slow.

“Yea, it would seem that we are one step clos­er to pep­per spray be­ing ac­ces­si­ble to women and well, cit­i­zens gen­er­al­ly, to pro­tect them­selves, but at the same time there is the ques­tion as to why it has tak­en this long to reach this point,” she said.

The Can­dle­light Move­ment was born af­ter 23-year-old An­drea Bharatt was kid­napped and killed and her body dumped in the Heights of Aripo in Feb­ru­ary 2021. Bharatt’s mur­der came al­most one month af­ter 18-year-old Ashan­ti Ri­ley was killed un­der sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances in San­ta Cruz. They both board­ed taxis but nev­er made it home alive.

Fol­low­ing the killings, there were many protests and vig­ils held around the coun­try as cit­i­zens called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment mea­sures to as­sist women in pro­tect­ing them­selves, with pep­per spray be­ing one such sug­ges­tion.

“The Can­dle­light Move­ment, on be­half of 128,500 cit­i­zens, re­quest­ed not on­ly pep­per spray but fast-track­ing firearm users’ li­cens­es for women to lev­el the play­field and give our women a fight­ing chance,” Bharath-Na­hous said.

She al­so re­mind­ed the Gov­ern­ment that the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of pri­vate PH taxis and the es­tab­lish­ment of a ve­hi­cle li­cense sys­tem that can­not be eas­i­ly coun­ter­feit­ed “are as im­por­tant as pep­per spray in cre­at­ing a safer coun­try for our women.”

Al­so re­act­ing to the new de­vel­op­ment as it re­lat­ed to pep­per spray leg­is­la­tion was the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN), whose pres­i­dent San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan said they wel­come the news.

“How­ev­er, our con­cern at the start of this con­ver­sa­tion re­mains the same, which is the pep­per spray get­ting in the wrong hands. Our sug­ges­tion was that prop­er pro­to­cols/reg­u­la­tions be de­vel­oped pri­or to ap­proval for use. Due dili­gence must al­so be con­duct­ed on every ap­pli­cant,” she said.

Those sen­ti­ments were shared by for­mer Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­ter (NOC) head Garvin Heer­ah. While he thinks al­low­ing the use of non-lethal weapons by cit­i­zens is a step in the right di­rec­tion, he urged cau­tion.

“This is a se­ri­ous sig­nif­i­cant move in na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and it should al­so be met with best prac­tices, mon­i­tor­ing and en­sur­ing that there is some sort of reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proach on its us­age,” Heer­ah said.

He ex­plained that this is some­thing new in our sys­tem “and there­fore, we need to cross all of our t’s and dot all of our i’s and en­sure that it is done in the best way. There­fore, pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, aware­ness and train­ing are very im­por­tant to how we in­tend to im­ple­ment this ini­tia­tive as a crime re­duc­tion strat­e­gy.”

But the for­mer NOC head does have one con­cern. He said with the in­crease in vi­o­lence in schools, it is im­por­tant par­ents and guardians who in­tend to pur­chase pep­per spray take ex­tra pre­cau­tions so that their chil­dren do not use it in the wrong way.

The Firearms (Amend­ment) Act No 7 of 2021 was passed in Par­lia­ment and was as­sent­ed to on Ju­ly 6, 2021, to reg­u­late the use of pep­per spray in Trinidad and To­ba­go.