Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

T&T is well on its way to be­com­ing a na­tion of py­ro­ma­ni­acs.Min­is­ter of the En­vi­ron­ment and Wa­ter Re­sources Gan­ga Singh said so on Wednes­day dur­ing his ad­dress at the launch of the Forestry Di­vi­sion's For­est Fire Pre­ven­tion Pro­gramme. The launch was held at the Riv­er Es­tate Mu­se­um and Wa­ter Wheel His­toric Site in Diego Mar­tin.

Singh said there was great need for his min­istry to build aware­ness about the ef­fects of for­est fires on pub­lic health, the en­vi­ron­ment and on in­fra­struc­ture. He said he was alarmed when he heard from Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Na­yar Ram­per­sad that there had been a to­tal of 468 re­port­ed fires be­tween De­cem­ber 2012 and now, with 388 of them tak­ing place in the month of Feb­ru­ary alone.

"That is, apart from the fact that we have had 97 fires for the for­est guardians to deal with, some 330 hectares, al­most 800 acres of for­est cov­er, burnt to the ground al­ready," he said.He added that if this trend con­tin­ued, the for­est cov­er would be dec­i­mat­ed.Singh said the min­istry's plans for leg­isla­tive in­ter­ven­tion would be ac­com­pa­nied by stronger law en­force­ment. In­clud­ed in these plans, he said, is the need to change the Agri­cul­tur­al Fires Act, which is "per­haps as old as the forestry di­vi­sion."

He said in the de­vel­op­ment of the pro­gramme, the di­vi­sion was pleased to col­lab­o­rate with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, as well as the T&T Air Guard.He ex­plained that both the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tion Cen­tre (NSOC) and the T&T Air Guard would utilise some of their he­li­copters for aer­i­al fire-fight­ing.At­tached to each he­li­copter is a Bam­bi Buck­et–a spe­cialised con­tain­er to col­lect and de­liv­er wa­ter in or­der to ex­tin­guish fires be­low. Dur­ing the launch, one of T&T Air Guard aer­i­al fire-fight­ing he­li­copters hov­ered above the site, al­low­ing those present to see the sus­pend­ed Bam­bi Buck­et.

Apart from mea­sures such as this, Singh said, the min­istry need­ed to tell cit­i­zens that "set­ting fires in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly is a crime against the en­vi­ron­ment."He said mem­bers of the pub­lic need­ed to know that a per­mit is re­quired for slash-and-burn agri­cul­ture, as well as clear­ing bush by burn­ing. This, he said, would be a key part of the min­istry's ini­tia­tives to ed­u­cate the pub­lic about for­est fire pre­ven­tion."We must now have ze­ro tol­er­ance for per­sons set­ting fires in our en­vi­ron­ment, in our back­yards, in our com­mu­ni­ties and in our coun­try," he said.Video footage was shown of air­craft be­ing used to ex­tin­guish fires along the North­ern Range and in parts of Cu­mu­to.