Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Re­porter

One hour of fire­works for the up­com­ing Old Year’s Night and the prospect of noise-re­duc­ing fire­works ahead.

This, af­ter the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Amend­ment Bill was passed in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day with sup­port from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion, PNM Sen­a­tor Fos­ter Cum­mings called on the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion to find com­mon ground on a more fre­quent ba­sis.

The bill, which was passed with­out amend­ments, was the last busi­ness con­clud­ed be­fore the Sen­ate took its Christ­mas break yes­ter­day.

The bill re­quires peo­ple to ap­ply to the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er for per­mits to use fire­works, ex­cept for us­age on pub­lic hol­i­days and De­cem­ber 31.
Fire­works will be al­lowed on pub­lic hol­i­days from 8 pm to 9 pm and from 11.30 pm to 12.30 am on De­cem­ber 31.

In con­clud­ing the de­bate, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment is now con­sid­er­ing the ex­tent to which it can im­prove on some of the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects caused by noisy tra­di­tion­al fire­works via the use of noise-re­duc­ing fire­works.

Je­re­mie not­ed the sup­port from the Op­po­si­tion and the In­de­pen­dents. But he said the PNM’s claims of own­er­ship of the bill were “un­true” and “non­sense,” as he said the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion were the bill’s au­thor.

How­ev­er, Je­re­mie agreed with Cum­mings’ view that the Gov­ern­ment needs to ex­am­ine the ques­tion of sales per­mits for fire­works im­por­ta­tion, and agreed with In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira that im­ple­men­ta­tion of the bill is key.

The bill is ex­pect­ed to be as­sent­ed to short­ly to be­come law.

PNM’s Fos­ter:

let’s work to­geth­er more

Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Cum­mings, say­ing the PNM sup­port­ed the bill, wel­comed “the rare bi­par­ti­san co-op­er­a­tion.”

Cum­mings said it was very re­ward­ing and en­cour­ag­ing “when the Gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion can come to­geth­er to pass pro­gres­sive leg­is­la­tion for good or­der and busi­ness of T&T.”

“The coun­try ex­pects that of us. Cit­i­zens look­ing on will feel proud of their Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, who they look at usu­al­ly op­er­at­ing in this ad­ver­sar­i­al-style pol­i­tics and some­times los­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take col­lec­tive de­ci­sions for T&T’s good or­der and de­vel­op­ment.”

He said the bill re­flect­ed the PNM’s po­si­tion since 2020.

In­de­pen­dents sup­port bill

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira said there was tri-par­ti­san sup­port for the bill. He agreed about the neg­a­tive ef­fects of fire­works on vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, from in­juries that can be caused as well as the tox­ic ef­fects of its com­po­nents and fumes, its noise pol­lu­tant ef­fect and its trau­ma­tis­ing ef­fect on an­i­mals.

He said years ago, when the law was made, fire­works were small.

“To­day, they re­sem­ble tac­ti­cal mil­i­tary dis­plays...the es­ca­la­tion is not just in vol­ume but mag­ni­tude, risk and reach.”
Be­fore the bill had arisen, Vieira said he had start­ed work on a pri­vate mem­bers’ bill to ad­dress these very is­sues.