CHARLES KONG SOO

Af­ter a sky or fire lantern brought fiery de­struc­tion from above on res­i­dents of Quar­ry Street,Port of Spain in the ear­ly morn­ing of New Year’s Day de­stroy­ing four homes and ren­der­ing 25 peo­ple home­less, calls for a ban on such in­cen­di­ary de­vices and fire­works have grown more stri­dent from cit­i­zens, pet own­ers and an­i­mal wel­fare ac­tivists.

If an out­right ban is not pos­si­ble, stake­hold­ers sug­gest that there are al­ter­na­tives such as silent or low noise fire­works.

Mean­while, the coun­try that in­vent­ed gun­pow­der and fire­works; Chi­na, has now moved on from tra­di­tion­al py­rotech­nics to us­ing drones, lasers and holo­graph pro­jec­tions for New Year’s Day cel­e­bra­tions in ma­jor cities like Bei­jing and Shang­hai, and oth­er events such as the Bei­jing Win­ter Olympics 2022.

While vis­it­ing the res­i­dents that were af­fect­ed by the fire in his con­stituen­cy, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain North/ St Ann’s West Stu­art Young com­ment­ed that it was his per­son­al opin­ion that he was not in favour of fire­works be­ing sold to mem­bers of the pub­lic.

The Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs has put out in the pub­lic do­main the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Bill 2021, “Fire­works Bill” seek­ing pub­lic feed­back on the pro­pos­als by Jan­u­ary 26.

The T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals (TTSP­CA) and the An­i­mal Wel­fare Net­work (AWN) is­sued re­leas­es on Fri­day call­ing for a ban on the sale of fire­works.

The or­gan­i­sa­tions al­so stat­ed that they did not sup­port the pro­posed Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Bill, 2021, in the cur­rent form as it did lit­tle to pre­vent the in­dis­crim­i­nate use of fire­works on pub­lic hol­i­days and New Year’s Eve and re­sult­ed in great harm to an­i­mals.

A Trinidad-born UK cit­i­zen speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty said that the Na­tion­al Farm­ers’ Union in Eng­land were call­ing for lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to ban sky lanterns and dis­suade the pub­lic from set­ting them off, re­mind­ing peo­ple of the dan­gers they pose to live­stock, a fire risk to build­ings and the en­vi­ron­ment.

Over the past sev­er­al years, there have been many in­ci­dents of peo­ple and an­i­mals be­ing killed, maimed or in­jured and prop­er­ty de­stroyed or dam­aged by fire­works and scratch bombs.

Scratch bombs are il­le­gal in T&T, but are smug­gled in­to the coun­try from Venezuela and are sold covert­ly.

Some­times hu­man er­ror and ac­ci­dents in­volv­ing fire­works can be dan­ger­ous to the man­u­fac­tur­er as well as the end-user as there have been sev­er­al cat­a­stroph­ic ex­plo­sions at fire­works fac­to­ries through­out the world.

• A Bar­rack­pore fam­i­ly’s in­fant son was in­jured in a fire­works ex­plo­sion dur­ing Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions in 2020.

• Chil­dren play­ing with scratch bombs and fire­works in the Mc Bean, Cou­va com­mu­ni­ty on Di­vali night in 2018 re­sult­ed in tragedy for three fam­i­lies af­ter two of their hous­es were de­stroy­ed by fire leav­ing nine peo­ple home­less, in­clud­ing four chil­dren.

• Al­so in 2018, a Barataria South Sec­ondary school teacher was hos­pi­talised af­ter a stu­dent at­tacked him for try­ing to con­fis­cate his scratch bombs.

• Jameel Al­lam­by, 33, who was wheel­chair-bound, was killed in a fire when he was trapped in his apart­ment on the out­skirts of Port-of-Spain af­ter a fire­work de­vice land­ed on the build­ing in Jan­u­ary 1, 2017. The fire al­so de­stroyed sev­er­al oth­er apart­ments ren­der­ing at least 15 peo­ple home­less.

The fire was caused by war­ring fac­tions in the area us­ing fire­works to at­tack their ri­vals as well as the po­lice.

• In 2016, Tal­paro grand­moth­er Sal­ly Ann Cuffie had her fin­gers blown off by a scratch bomb when it was flung in­to the car she was trav­el­ling with her fam­i­ly.

• When he was two years old, Joshua Ru­fus lost part of his right hand when he placed a scratch bomb in­to a light­ed deya dur­ing Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions at his par­ent’s Debe Trace, Debe home in 2015.

• Al­so in 2015, a Freeport man lost sev­er­al of his fin­gers when a scratch bomb blew up in his hands.

• A po­lice­man and his fam­i­ly suf­fered burns when some­one hurled fire­works in­to a crowd at a Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion in 2014.

Nali­ni Di­al, pres­i­dent of An­i­mals are Hu­man Too and Fire­works Use Suf­fer­ers said that there was no need for any pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion since a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC)was held in 2017, and stake­hold­ers had al­ready giv­en their pro­pos­als, and to date, no af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion or their rec­om­men­da­tions had been im­ple­ment­ed.

When the Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi Fri­day for his com­ment on Di­al’s state­ment re­gard­ing the JSC, he said, “The Gov­ern­ment has put for­ward a rec­om­men­da­tion from the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion (LRC).

“It’s not the pol­i­cy of the Gov­ern­ment, it’s de­signed to com­mence the dis­cus­sion from stake­hold­ers whose views are both po­larised and di­verse.

We’ve al­ready start­ed re­ceiv­ing very use­ful sub­mis­sions, some of which are go­ing to be put back out in the pub­lic do­main. We’ve asked peo­ple to give their sub­mis­sions by Jan­u­ary 26, af­ter this we’re go­ing to do an in­ter­ac­tive plat­form invit­ing stake­hold­ers who are di­verse in their views to make fur­ther rec­om­men­da­tions and dis­cuss the is­sue fur­ther.”

He said the next step will be to do a ma­trix of pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions, seek Cab­i­net ap­proval then draft the ap­pro­pri­ate law.

When asked about con­tra­band scratch bombs be­ing smug­gled in­to the coun­try, Al-Rawi replied that a more co­op­er­a­tive ap­proach should be tak­en.

He ex­plained per­sons who saw oth­er peo­ple us­ing fire­works or lanterns in a dan­ger­ous man­ner can be re­port­ed, ev­i­dence was re­quired.

Al-Rawi replied that there will al­ways be peo­ple who break the law, the ques­tion was how can we change that cul­ture in a pro­gres­sive way.

Po­lit­i­cal and an­i­mal rights ac­tivist Jow­elle De Souza who served Al-Rawi with a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter in 2019 call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to en­act a pol­i­cy to im­prove the wel­fare of an­i­mals or face court ac­tion was crit­i­cal of the AG’s pro­pos­als re­fer­ring to them as fluff and a dis­trac­tion as the coun­try had oth­er press­ing is­sues to con­tend with.

She de­scribed him as the same AG that en­cour­aged the Gov­ern­ment to make a 16 mem­ber Cab­i­net ap­point­ed board which she sat on and chaired to make new laws for an­i­mals and to­day, not one law had been im­ple­ment­ed by any of the branch­es such as the TT Po­lice Ser­vice or Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.

De Souza, the founder of An­i­mals Alive T&T shel­ter said, “Do you re­al­ly think this AG is seek­ing the in­ter­est for the good of coun­try and an­i­mal wel­fare re­gard­ing fire­works giv­en his track record when he in­tro­duced new laws in Ju­ly 2021 mak­ing an­oth­er amend­ment for the se­lec­tion process for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice—which re­moved the re­quire­ment for the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) to re­tain an in­de­pen­dent firm for the re­cruit­ment process?”

She said mem­bers of the an­i­mal wel­fare group GOAL (Give Our An­i­mals Love) were fi­nal­is­ing plans to ask Al-Rawi how was the Gov­ern­ment go­ing to im­ple­ment an an­nu­al fire­works reg­u­la­tion for Di­vali, Christ­mas and New Year’s Day.

CEO of Pets to the Vet, Mar­guerite Mi­ran­da said af­ter every pub­lic hol­i­day, Di­vali, Eid, Christ­mas and Old Year’s, were some of the busiest days for her trans­port­ing peo­ple’s pets in­jured by fire­works for med­ical treat­ment in her pet am­bu­lance.

She said fire­works should be left it to large com­pa­nies with the where­with­al such as Cli­co to hold large, elab­o­rate fire­works at Old Year’s Night, as most Trinida­di­ans were not dis­ci­plined enough to go to sa­van­nahs or large open spaces to dis­charge their fire­works and she was an ad­vo­cate for silent fire­works.

Mi­ran­da replied that an­oth­er plus for silent fire­works would make it hard­er for peo­ple who used fire­works to mask gun­shots.