RYAN BA­CHOO

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

It is past time that Trinidad and To­ba­go ac­knowl­edges noise pol­lu­tion as “a pub­lic health cri­sis”.

This is the as­sess­ment of the ad­vo­ca­cy group, Cit­i­zens Against Noise Pol­lu­tion (CANP), who ap­peared on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew.

CANP is call­ing on the Min­is­ter of Health to get in­volved and back bet­ter leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect cit­i­zens against noise pol­lu­tion.

Group spokesper­son, Tama­ra Chatar, as­serts that ex­ces­sive noise is tak­ing a toll on peo­ple's men­tal and phys­i­cal health.

She is con­cerned that law en­force­ment have been un­able to prop­er­ly po­lice the is­sue...

“It is a pub­lic health cri­sis,” she main­tains, “and I be­lieve the Min­is­ter of Health needs to get prop­er­ly in­volved in this is­sue. As a coun­try, we can­not turn our heads away from men­tal health and how this [noise pol­lu­tion] af­fects our men­tal health, as well as our phys­i­cal health.”

“We need to talk about this, and we need to train of­fi­cers to deal with these is­sues so they can speak to the pub­lic,” she ar­gues. “Peo­ple have no faith in what has been put there [leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions] to help us.”

Mean­while, CANP di­rec­tor Lindy Ann Ba­choo pro­posed sev­er­al short and medi­um term so­lu­tions to the is­sue of noise pol­lu­tion.

“In the short term, we would like the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the EMA to have a stake­hold­er meet­ing with us, to start en­forc­ing the cur­rent rules and laws re­gard­ing noise pol­lu­tion,” she ex­plained.

“In the long term, we are ask­ing [for leg­is­la­tion] to make it a tick­et-able of­fence, as is the case in many de­vel­oped coun­tries,” Ba­choo not­ed. “We al­so want to see the au­thor­i­ties im­ple­ment­ing qui­et time laws.”

To en­hance en­force­abil­i­ty, she urges leg­is­la­tors to con­sid­er in­clud­ing use of “a plain­ly au­di­ble clause”.

“One of the key draw­backs the po­lice have not­ed is that they don’t have noise me­ters,” she said.

CANP is hop­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion takes the is­sue se­ri­ous­ly.

Ear­li­er this month, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that leg­is­la­tion to curb noise pol­lu­tion will be brought to Par­lia­ment in Sep­tem­ber.