Pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on a draft bill seek­ing to reg­u­late the use of fire­works will be­gin this com­ing week, ac­cord­ing to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi.

Al-Rawi said a bill and pol­i­cy pa­per has al­ready been draft­ed and will ad­dress the man­age­ment and le­gal­i­ty of fire­works.

He said the bill was tak­en to the cab­i­net in De­cem­ber, but the Cab­i­net de­cid­ed it should be sub­ject to con­sul­ta­tion to al­low stake­hold­ers to be heard.

The AG broke the news of the draft bill on Twit­ter on New Year’s Day in re­sponse to a tweet.

On Sun­day he gave Guardian Me­dia more de­tails about it.

Ac­cord­ing to Al-Rawi, the is­sue re­quires con­sul­ta­tion be­cause it is a heart­felt mat­ter with po­lar­ized views.

“We pro­posed a pol­i­cy which in­volves a sig­nif­i­cant amend­ment on the fines, the use of fix penal­ty pro­vi­sions, tick­ets etc…There would be reg­u­lat­ed hours for use of fire­works on par­tic­u­lar days and that any ex­cep­tions to us­age would be done by way of ap­pli­ca­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

“Our pol­i­cy speaks to reg­u­lat­ing the use of fire­works in an area such that vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple and en­ti­ties and an­i­mals are pro­tect­ed, whilst oth­er peo­ple can ex­press them­selves as they do with fire­works.”

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al said he is look­ing for­ward to putting amend­ed fire­work leg­is­la­tion in place be­cause, as seen in a re­cent fire in East Port-of-Spain, the un­reg­u­lat­ed use of fire­works/lanterns can lead to dis­as­ter.

Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 99 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act, “Any per­son who throws, casts, sets fire to, or lets off any fire­works with­in any town is li­able to a fine of $1,000.”

Sec­tion 100 of the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act says, “Any per­son who throws, casts, sets fire to or lets off any fire­works in­to, in or up­on any oth­er street or any­where with­in 60 feet of the cen­tre of a street is sub­ject to a $400 fine.”

Over the years ac­tivists and even or­di­nary cit­i­zens have com­plained about the dis­rup­tions caused by the in­dis­crim­i­nate use of fire­works to the el­der­ly and sick.

An­i­mal own­ers and groups have al­so lament­ed the ef­fect fire­works have on pets and the mea­sures they have to go to se­cure and pro­tect their an­i­mals.

Just a cou­ple of days ago the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion warned the pub­lic about the dan­ger lanterns and fire­works can pose to elec­tri­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

Mean­while, Ash­mead Ghany of Fire Pow­er Fire­works said he has no is­sue with the bill seek­ing to reg­u­late fire­work use.

He said his com­pa­ny has long sug­gest­ed that fire­works ought to be used on­ly at spe­cif­ic times.

“We have no is­sues with that what­so­ev­er. So, if they can on­ly be used at des­ig­nat­ed times, that’s per­fect, rather than peo­ple be­ing in­dis­crim­i­nate and just shoot­ing when­ev­er. We sup­port that, from that per­spec­tive,” he said.

“We al­so agree that stay­ing away from med­ical in­sti­tu­tions, hos­pi­tals, we are in agree­ment with that as well. There’s no is­sue with that. That is com­mon sense.”

On New Year’s day, more than twen­ty peo­ple at Quar­ry Street, in Port-of-Spain, were left home­less by a fire start­ed by a sky lantern.