Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Head of the Fire­works Ac­tion Coali­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FACTT), Roger Mar­shall, is again call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to act on leg­is­la­tion for the use of fire­works. He made the call yes­ter­day as he re­port­ed that they had re­ceived the most re­ports and com­plaints about the abuse of fire­works us­age in their ex­is­tence.

He said fol­low­ing New Year’s fire­works cel­e­bra­tions, around 12 dog car­cass­es were iden­ti­fied on the high­way from Barataria to Ch­agua­nas, and all were be­lieved to have been linked to fire­works us­age near the an­i­mals.

In ad­di­tion to this, Mar­shall, who is al­so the founder of the An­i­mals 360 Foun­da­tion, said many cit­i­zens com­plained about the loud noise of fire­works dis­turb­ing their neigh­bour­hoods.

He ref­er­enced videos cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia which showed young men us­ing fire­works to fire at hous­es and at one an­oth­er in Port-of-Spain dur­ing the New Year’s Day fes­tiv­i­ties. In one video, a young man ap­peared to be tied to a lamp­post, while oth­er men launched fire­works at his hands to loosen the ties.

Mar­shall said this is the sort of ac­tiv­i­ty that breeds crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

“I’m sure you have seen the videos of what I would re­fer to as gang war­fare on Dun­can and New Streets, and Char­lotte Street, over the new year pe­ri­od. Peo­ple are lit­er­al­ly shoot­ing each oth­er with fire­works. I mean this has just gone too far, and what makes it worse, is this is a con­ver­sa­tion that has been go­ing on for 19 years. For 19 years, the cit­i­zens have been com­plain­ing about the use of fire­works, about the hurt fire­works cre­ate, the trau­ma it cre­ates, and noth­ing is done year af­ter year,” Mar­shall said.

He said by not im­ple­ment­ing stricter mea­sures, the Gov­ern­ment is pro­tect­ing fire­works dis­trib­u­tors in­stead of cit­i­zens.

“The im­porters, the sell­ers and dis­trib­u­tors of fire­works seem to be pro­tect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment at the ex­pense of the rest of the cit­i­zens, who seem to have no re­course on this whole is­sue. Last year, the pre­vi­ous At­tor­ney Gen­er­al (Faris Al-Rawi) gave rec­om­men­da­tions for fire­works that were a joke. He was ac­tu­al­ly free­ing up the fire­works use for 95 per cent of the time; that is pub­lic hol­i­days and old year’s night, say­ing that no li­cense will be re­quired,” Mar­shall added.

Guardian Me­dia re­ceived sev­er­al let­ters of com­plaints about fire­works us­age over the last cou­ple days.

Mean­while, a Diego Mar­tin caller on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day com­pared the sounds of fire­works to bombs ex­plod­ing.

“Down here was like Ukraine, Rus­sia, Afghanistan all in one. I’m sure there are peo­ple liv­ing here who are from maybe Syr­ia and these war-prone coun­tries, and they prob­a­bly swore they were back in their coun­try be­cause there were ex­plo­sions. Every­body is say­ing this year was the worst. All 8 o’clock in the morn­ing you’re hear­ing this ex­plo­sion go­ing on. The au­thor­i­ties need to do some­thing about that. We start­ed our year with 5 or 6 mur­ders, well, if you ring in your new year with ex­plo­sions like if you’re at war, what do you ex­pect for the rest of the year?” she said.

The caller added that her neigh­bour’s house al­most caught fire af­ter a Chi­nese lantern land­ed in his gallery.

On Sun­day, at least three Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain busi­ness­es al­so caught fire due to fire­works which res­i­dents said were set off by young peo­ple in the area.

Yes­ter­day, Mar­shall said the coali­tion has rec­om­mend­ed that fire­works should not be dis­charged with­in two miles of a hos­pi­tal, a home for the el­der­ly, zoos, an­i­mal shel­ters, na­tion­al parks, or res­i­den­tial ar­eas, and that they should al­so be lim­it­ed to spe­cif­ic times and with­in spe­cif­ic time pe­ri­ods.

This is just one of the claus­es ad­dressed in the Draft Leg­isla­tive Pro­pos­al of The Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Bill, 2021, al­so known as the “Fire­works Bill”, which is yet to be laid in Par­lia­ment.

Mar­shall said al­though At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour said he had re­viewed the rec­om­men­da­tions for the bill, no oth­er de­tails have been pro­vid­ed.

Last Jan­u­ary, then-At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi draft­ed leg­is­la­tion that pro­posed cit­i­zens re­quir­ing a li­cense to set off fire­works. How­ev­er, they were not re­quired to ob­tain a per­mit for the dis­charge of fire­works on a pub­lic hol­i­day and on De­cem­ber 31.

Mar­shall said he be­lieved deal­ing with in­dis­crim­i­nate fire­works us­age could al­so help the Gov­ern­ment in its crime fight.

“If the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about re­dou­bling its ef­forts, as the Prime Min­is­ter is talk­ing about fight­ing crime, they must start im­me­di­ate­ly by tak­ing fire­works out of the hands of the gen­er­al pub­lic and the youth,” he said,

“We are cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment for train­ing crim­i­nals. How does the Gov­ern­ment in­tend to sup­press and erad­i­cate crime, if not by ad­dress­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to fire­works by our use and the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion? We are say­ing that fire­works must be tak­en out of the hands of the gen­er­al pub­lic. There’s no way to con­trol it once it’s in the hands of the gen­er­al pub­lic. Fire­works should be per­mit­ted on­ly by ap­proved pro­fes­sion­al fire­works op­er­a­tors who can man­age com­mer­cial dis­plays and in lo­ca­tions that do not im­pact an­i­mals or peo­ple.”

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, on the is­sue yes­ter­day.

Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal, who had spear­head­ed pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on fire­works leg­is­la­tion last year, said the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly on the agen­da of the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es (F&GP) Com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net and on­ly af­ter con­sid­er­a­tion and ap­proval, would it be tabled in Par­lia­ment. Be­fore this, the Bill was re­vis­it­ed by the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion and it then went to Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion. She added that while laws are crit­i­cal to gov­ern­ing so­ci­ety, every cit­i­zen must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for pro­tect­ing the coun­try and man­ag­ing their be­hav­iour.

Ac­cord­ing to the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act Chap­ter 11:02, Sec­tion 99, “Any per­son who throws, casts, sets fire to, or lets off any fire­works with­in any town, is li­able to a fine of one thou­sand dol­lars.”