As the Par­ty Boat show con­tin­ued its sec­ond week run, we learnt that a leaked sta­tion di­ary en­try in­di­cat­ed that AG Al Rawi was in fact im­pli­cat­ed in the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion when he was called by the par­ty boat own­er on his de­ten­tion. As the episode pro­ceed­ed, war­rants were is­sued for the search of the own­er’s homes for the restau­rant li­cense is­sued by Cus­toms & Ex­cise. The heavy ro­ta­tion this scan­dal has been re­ceiv­ing in cer­tain pro-PNM cir­cles is in­dica­tive that AG Al Rawi has be­come quite un­pop­u­lar in his par­ty as many PNM mem­bers and sup­port­ers have come out pub­licly against his in­ter­fer­ence and are call­ing for his re­moval. In­ter­est­ing­ly, some have said that the chal­lenge to AG Al Rawi from with­in the PNM is far more se­vere than that posed by the Op­po­si­tion, at the mo­ment!

The AG fired off his own di­ver­sion­ary squib with a Twit­ter post on New Year’s Day re­gard­ing his draft­ing of a bill which was rel­e­vant to the sur­vival of his dog on “New Years Night”. It might be wise for the AG to avoid per­son­al ref­er­ences in his pub­lic du­ties dur­ing this par­tic­u­lar­ly in­cen­di­ary pe­ri­od for him. He claims a draft bill went be­fore the cab­i­net in De­cem­ber and it was de­cid­ed that con­sul­ta­tions would en­sue. Some of the amend­ments pro­posed are to re­de­fine the term ‘fire­works’ and dis­tin­guish be­tween ‘toy fire­works’ and ‘prop­er fire­works’ with fines in­creased to $1000 for breach­es. Fire­works us­age would be al­lowed on all pub­lic hol­i­days be­tween 8pm and 9pm and on Old Year’s night from 11:30pm -1am, with ap­pli­ca­tion to au­thor­i­ties two weeks in ad­vance. I won­der if the AG thinks that his dog would be any safer if he/she is in the vicin­i­ty of “per­mit­ted” fire­works on 01.01.2023. The dev­il is def­i­nite­ly in the noise and per­haps even the light show, NOT the “per­mit”. I don’t know of any­one who has com­plained of fire­works us­age out­side of the “pub­lic hol­i­day” as­so­ci­at­ed with such in­cen­di­ary dis­play.

Stud­ies have shown that the lev­els of sus­pend­ed par­tic­u­late mat­ter (SPM), CO, NOx, hy­dro­car­bons and SO2 in the air, in­crease to un­safe lev­els dur­ing fire­works dis­plays. Preg­nant women, chil­dren, the el­der­ly, those with chron­ic asth­ma are most vul­ner­a­ble to such ex­po­sure. The SPM lev­els can cause throat, nose and eye re­lat­ed prob­lems. It can lead to headaches and re­duced men­tal acu­ity. There are much more se­vere ef­fects in peo­ple with heart, res­pi­ra­to­ry or ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders. It can ag­gra­vate is­sues for peo­ple suf­fer­ing from cold al­ler­gies or coughs and can al­so cause con­ges­tion of throat and chest.

The as­so­ci­at­ed noise pol­lu­tion may be just as prob­lem­at­ic. The Stan­dard ac­cept­able noise lev­el for the am­bi­ent en­vi­ron­ment is 60 deci­bels in the day­time and 50 deci­bels at night. Fire­works can cause these lev­els to ex­ceed 140 deci­bels. Noise at up­wards of 85 deci­bels can lead to rest­less­ness, tem­po­rary or per­ma­nent hear­ing loss, high blood pres­sure, and sleep dis­tur­bance.

Fire­works can al­so cause res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems such as: chron­ic or al­ler­gic bron­chi­tis, bronchial asth­ma, si­nusi­tis, rhini­tis, pneu­mo­nia and laryn­gi­tis. With the el­e­vat­ed dai­ly rate of new COVID in­fec­tions, it is not far-fetched to be­lieve that the re­cent air and noise pol­lu­tion could have ex­ac­er­bat­ed the laboured res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions of such pa­tients.

The ef­fects on an­i­mals are sim­i­lar­ly dis­tress­ing. They are eas­i­ly ter­ri­fied by loud nois­es and sud­den flash­es of bright light which can cause dis­ori­en­ta­tion and they have been known to in­jure them­selves in seek­ing refuge. The AG’s dog is no dif­fer­ent from our oth­er lo­cal fau­na, do­mes­ti­cat­ed as well as wild, all of them de­serv­ing of our con­sid­er­a­tion and pro­tec­tion.

I per­son­al­ly do not think that fire­works should be banned how­ev­er there should be strin­gent guide­lines on their use. A ma­jor crit­i­cism of the bill is that there is no re­spon­si­bil­i­ty placed on the dis­trib­u­tors of fire­works but on­ly on the con­sumers and the ca­pac­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of re­sources to the TTPS to im­ple­ment the pro­posed laws.

There should be con­sid­er­a­tion for hav­ing ac­cess to silent fire­works as an al­ter­na­tive, ge­o­graph­i­cal zon­ings of their use, a spe­cif­ic num­ber of per­mits to be ap­proved and to al­low the use of fire­works on cer­tain pub­lic hol­i­days and not on all pub­lic hol­i­days. The var­i­ous rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties should as­sess where the most vul­ner­a­ble are and keep these fire­works dis­plays away from them. Lessons must be learnt as well from stray in­cen­di­aries which have caused dam­age to prop­er­ty as well to life and limb.

In spite of this fire­works dis­trac­tion, the pop­u­la­tion is up in arms due to food in­fla­tion dri­ven by in­creased prices in flour and poul­try. The sud­den sus­pen­sion of the Food Sup­port Pro­gramme will cre­ate fur­ther dis­tress. The Gov­ern­ment should be bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to deal with run­away food in­fla­tion and ex­pand­ing the Food Sup­port ini­tia­tive. If these mat­ters are not treat­ed with, ef­fec­tive­ly, the gov­ern­ment will have far more high cal­i­bre ar­tillery to deal with than mere fire­works in this elec­tion year. It is doubt­ful that such chal­lenge will come from the oth­er side of the cham­ber though.