Sto­ries by

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A firearm deal­er and sev­er­al clients, op­posed to an on­go­ing re­new­al process for all firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) hold­ers, will have to take Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to court to stop the manda­to­ry ini­tia­tive. 

Af­ter the process was an­nounced by Hare­wood-Christo­pher last month, at­tor­ney Nyree Al­fon­so, who owns the Firearms Train­ing In­sti­tute along with her hus­band Towfeek Ali, sought to ques­tion why long stand­ing FUL hold­ers were be­ing sub­ject­ed to re­new­al. Al­fon­so point­ed to Sec­tion 17(6) of the Firearms (Amend­ment) Act, which states that FULs grant­ed pri­or to the pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion in 2004 will re­main valid un­less ter­mi­nat­ed or re­voked. 

She al­so took is­sue with the $500 re­new­al fee as well as the April dead­line, which she sug­gest­ed is not fea­si­ble con­sid­er­ing the re­quire­ments for re­new­al in­clude ob­tain­ing com­pe­ten­cy cer­tifi­cates from reg­is­tered firearm train­ers. 

In a re­sponse to a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on Tues­day, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) Head of Le­gal Ser­vices Al­lan­na Ri­vas sug­gest­ed that the leg­is­la­tion did not have the ef­fect sug­gest­ed by Al­fon­so. 

“The rule of law re­quires that all per­sons in­clud­ing not on­ly your client but al­so pub­lic au­thor­i­ties com­ply with re­spec­tive oblig­a­tions im­posed by the statute,” she said. 

She said al­low­ing such FUL hold­ers to avoid re­new­al would be gross­ly un­fair to new­er hold­ers who al­ready re­new every three years. 

“We note fur­ther that no au­thor­i­ty you have pro­duced es­tab­lish­es any ba­sis for re­ly­ing up­on any past prac­tice to re­lieve against the con­tin­u­ing oblig­a­tion to com­ply with statute,” Ri­vas said. 

Ri­vas warned that there would be con­se­quences for non-com­pli­ance with the re­new­al regime. 

“Your sug­ges­tion that the Com­mis­sion­er could in­ter­pret the Act to over­look your clients’ ap­par­ent de­lib­er­ate non-com­pli­ance with the re­new­al regime or to pre­serve the va­lid­i­ty of FULs of all non-com­pli­ant FUL hold­ers, is frankly self-serv­ing,” she said.  

The regime has al­so been met with com­plaints from mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices, who were pre­vi­ous­ly ex­empt­ed from com­pe­ten­cy and med­ical cer­tifi­cates for re­new­al. 

The com­pa­ny, Ali, Al­fon­so and some of their clients are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Be­har­ry­lal, KC, and Kiel Tak­lals­ingh.