Chester Sam­bra­no

A sur­vey con­duct­ed by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has found that a ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple want to see a ban on the use of noisy fire­works.

This rev­e­la­tion comes days be­fore this coun­try cel­e­brates In­de­pen­dence Day, a day when cel­e­bra­tions con­tain the use and dis­play of fire­works through­out sev­er­al parts of the coun­try.

In de­liv­er­ing the re­sults man­ag­er of the Air, Waste and Noise Unit at the EMA, Jiselle Joseph said the find­ings of this sur­vey will ac­com­pa­ny rec­om­men­da­tions al­ready made by the EMA to have the ban im­ple­ment­ed. This ad­vice was pre­sent­ed to the Min­istry of Plan­ning in June 2019.

Joseph said peo­ple were giv­en some op­tions for per­sons to say what they would like to see in terms of mov­ing for­ward for treat­ment of fire­works, “And the largest group of just over 45 per cent in­di­cat­ed that they would like a ban on the tra­di­tion­al noisy fire­works and al­low on­ly the use of noise-re­duc­ing fire­works.”

Over the years this has been a top­ic of con­tention with many com­plaints about the noise that comes from the fire­works and its ef­fects on par­tic­u­lar­ly the el­der­ly and an­i­mals.

On­ly last year it was blamed for the death of a red kan­ga­roo at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo. A pe­ti­tion was sub­se­quent­ly launched call­ing for the ban.

It has not been re­vealed by the Cab­i­net whether or not those calls will be an­swered.

In ad­di­tion to the ban, Joseph said re­spon­dents want to see more ac­tion tak­en against of­fend­ers.

“There is an­oth­er large per­cent­age that spoke to stricter en­force­ment and fines be­ing im­ple­ment­ed for what is cur­rent­ly in place.”

Cur­rent­ly, there are two fines for fire­works-re­lat­ed of­fences; $1,000 and $400.

The EMA sur­vey on the use and im­pact of fire­works was con­duct­ed from June 19 to Ju­ly 31, 2020.