The Co­or­di­na­tor of the Fire­works Ac­tion Coali­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (FACTT) is ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment over, what he de­scribed as Gov­ern­ment’s re­peat­ed fail­ure to guard against the un­reg­u­lat­ed use of fire­works dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Roger Mar­shall ac­cused the au­thor­i­ties of con­tin­u­ing to kick the can on the mat­ter low­er down the road rather than im­ple­ment the nec­es­sary mea­sures which he said could pro­tect an­i­mals and the vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety.

Mar­shall was crit­i­cal of act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Stu­art Young who, on Mon­day, said the re­cent­ly de­clared State of Emer­gency will not af­fect the use of fire­works when ques­tioned.

“Un­der this State of Emer­gency, they’ve seen it fit to pro­tect in­no­cent by­standers and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens from the pos­si­ble fall­out of gang war­fare and reprisal at­tacks. How­ev­er, they still don’t see it nec­es­sary to pro­tect the in­no­cent by­standers and law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who will con­tin­ue to be im­pact­ed from the fall­out of fire­works.”

Mar­shall and mem­bers of oth­er ad­vo­ca­cy groups are brac­ing for an ex­pect­ed height­ened use of fire­works for New Year’s cel­e­bra­tions.

In a state­ment is­sued, the group Cit­i­zens Against Noise Pol­lu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CANPTT) ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment over the in­ac­tion by Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the abuse of fire­works dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

“The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go looked to the SOE as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for respite from the in­ces­sant and in­dis­crim­i­nate use of fire­works—an is­sue that has caused im­mense suf­fer­ing to fam­i­lies, pets, the el­der­ly, and in­di­vid­u­als with PTSD or sen­so­ry sen­si­tiv­i­ties. This hope was met not with ac­tion or em­pa­thy, but with bla­tant dis­re­gard and triv­i­al­iza­tion by those en­trust­ed with up­hold­ing pub­lic peace and se­cu­ri­ty.”

The group added that Gov­ern­ment’s “si­lence” on this mat­ter was un­ac­cept­able.

“To the act­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, we say this: Your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to the peo­ple, not to the prof­its of fire­works ven­dors or the fleet­ing in­dul­gence of those who dis­re­gard the law. The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve bet­ter, and we de­mand bet­ter.”

Mean­while, Fire One’s Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er, Vish­wani Gui­ness wants the pub­lic to be rea­son­able when it comes to us­ing fire­works. The lo­cal fire­works sup­pli­er asked for the pub­lic to use fire­works for on­ly half an hour.

She said, “One of the things Fire One al­ways pro­motes is safe­ty. We al­ways ask our cus­tomers to fol­low the rules and in­struc­tions and more than any­thing, we en­cour­age them to be their broth­er’s keep­er, en­sur­ing they are con­sid­er­ate when us­ing our prod­uct.”