Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Roger Mar­shall, founder of An­i­mals 360 Foun­da­tion and the Fire­works Ac­tion Coali­tion of T&T, yes­ter­day ac­cused the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al of block­ing in­vit­ed par­tic­i­pants from tak­ing part in a vir­tu­al con­sul­ta­tion on a pro­posed fire­works law.

The ses­sion fo­cused on the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Bill, 2022 which seeks to reg­u­late the use of fire­works by way of a per­mit sys­tem and to make breach­es of the law a tick­et of­fence.

The Bill con­tains five claus­es and re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote.

In a state­ment, Mar­shall said: “The sham pur­port­ed to be a con­sul­ta­tion was noth­ing short of fab­ri­cat­ed the­atre to in­sult the in­tel­li­gence of the pop­u­la­tion. Based on a sur­vey of over 3,000 cit­i­zens, 95 per cent are call­ing for pro­tec­tion from fire­works and for the use of fire­works by the gen­er­al pub­lic to be pro­hib­it­ed.

He added that rec­om­men­da­tions in the draft bill are “sim­ply ab­surd” and have re­moved what lit­tle pro­tec­tion cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly have un­der the ex­ist­ing Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act.

“The draft bill in fact pro­motes in­creased cal­lous and ir­re­spon­si­ble use of fire­works in that it re­lax­es cur­rent re­stric­tions and en­cour­ages the use of fire­works for 95 per cent of tra­di­tion­al fire­works us­age. This is a step back­wards. We can not con­tin­ue to en­cour­age or sanc­tion be­hav­iour that is detri­men­tal to the health, peace and se­cu­ri­ty of our cit­i­zens,” he said.

Claim­ing that fire­works de­stroy lives and liveli­hoods, Mar­shall said: “In April of 2020 the Law Re­form Com­mis­sion pub­lished a pol­i­cy pa­per which states, ‘the risks, nui­sance and threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty as­so­ci­at­ed with fire­works pro­vide suf­fi­cient im­pe­tus for the in­dus­try to be strict­ly con­trolled.”

In re­sponse to Mar­shall’s claims that some stake­hold­ers were blocked from the vir­tu­al con­sul­ta­tion, Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal said there was a mod­er­a­tor who was so­lic­it­ing ques­tions from mul­ti­ple streams and those ques­tions were put to the pan­el, dur­ing the live feed.

“The mod­er­a­tor mod­er­at­ed the dis­cus­sion as he was ex­pect­ed to do but I don’t be­lieve it is fair to say that this was sani­tis­ing the dis­cus­sion. As a mat­ter of fact, I be­lieve a lot of per­ti­nent ques­tions were ad­dressed and views not­ed,” she said.

“I will not apol­o­gise for the mood of yes­ter­day’s fo­rum, I have par­tic­i­pat­ed in and wit­nessed meet­ings such as this at the high­est lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, re­gion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly and at all times, due to hu­man in­ter­ac­tion on a pan­el there is con­ver­sa­tion and even light hu­mour, one must un­der­stand that light hu­mour is a part of hu­man in­ter­ac­tions.

“This in no way takes away from the se­ri­ous­ness of the dis­cus­sion and the con­stant rep­e­ti­tion by my­self and all mem­bers of the pan­el of how im­por­tant we viewed yes­ter­day’s de­lib­er­a­tions. As a mat­ter of fact, I be­gan the con­sul­ta­tion by high­light­ing why this is­sue of fire­works had been pri­ori­tised by the Min­istry.”

Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal in­sist­ed that the Gov­ern­ment wel­comes all crit­i­cisms: “At all times the Gov­ern­ment through my­self and the of­fi­cers of the  Law Re­form Com­mis­sion were clear that the bill was in its draft form and the rea­son for the con­sul­ta­tion was to so­lic­it the opin­ion of our cit­i­zens, what would be use­ful is rec­om­men­da­tions from our stake­hold­ers, rec­om­men­da­tions that we will con­sid­er once we re­turn to the draw­ing board on the law.”