KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The day af­ter Di­vali, vol­un­teers at the An­i­mals Alive shel­ter were bury­ing a dog that had died of a heart at­tack.

Ten peo­ple were on du­ty at the shel­ter, which hous­es 500 dogs, 75 cats and two hors­es, pa­trolling the ken­nels through the night. They still could not save the an­i­mal, said shel­ter pres­i­dent Kathryn Cleghorn.

Across south and cen­tral Trinidad, pets bolt­ed. In Palmiste, San Fer­nan­do, dogs and cats ran loose on the boule­vard, ac­cord­ing to an­i­mal rights ac­tivist and for­mer op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Jow­elle De Souza.

Neigh­bours post­ed pho­tos of the strays in com­mu­ni­ty What­sApp chats and kept some overnight. De Souza said fire­works were set off from Fri­day to Mon­day.

The Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Act took ef­fect on De­cem­ber 19, 2025, bar­ring peo­ple from set­ting off fire­works with­out a per­mit from the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. With­out a per­mit, fire­works may be set off on pub­lic hol­i­days on­ly be­tween 8 pm and 9 pm. They are pro­hib­it­ed with­in half a mile of hos­pi­tals, air­ports, zoos, reg­is­tered an­i­mal shel­ters, an­i­mal farms, for­est re­serves and na­tion­al parks.

Vi­o­lat­ing the law is a tick­etable of­fence car­ry­ing a fixed penal­ty of $450.

Cleghorn said the noise be­gan at 6.15 pm and stopped at 8 pm.

“At five past nine, the noise start­ed back again. It was al­most like a venge­ful kind of re­tal­i­a­tion against the law,” she said.

The noise con­tin­ued un­til about mid­night. Cleghorn said she called the po­lice at 9.52 pm to re­quest a pa­trol. She watched the main road un­til mid­night but did not see a po­lice ve­hi­cle pass.

“So there is a law, but there is no en­force­ment. How can that make sense?”

De Souza de­scribed a sim­i­lar pat­tern in Palmiste, Gulf View and Bel Air. She claimed no pa­trols came through and that wealth shield­ed of­fend­ers.

“The law does not ex­ist to peo­ple who have mon­ey.”

The po­lice ser­vice said that, af­ter last Old Year’s Night, no one had been charged with a fire­works of­fence since the law took ef­fect. Be­fore Di­vali this year, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­mind­ed the pub­lic of the rules in a so­cial me­dia post on No­vem­ber 6 and urged cit­i­zens to avoid caus­ing dis­tress to the el­der­ly, chil­dren and an­i­mals.

An­i­mal wel­fare group FACTT said that more than 24 hours af­ter the Di­vali night fire­works, it had heard noth­ing from the Prime Min­is­ter, de­spite her promise to the pub­lic if the law was not re­spect­ed.

The group said Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der had in­stead be­come the Gov­ern­ment’s mouth­piece on fire­works by call­ing for a boy­cott of a pri­vate-sec­tor com­pa­ny.

FACTT said, “We call on the Prime Min­is­ter to now keep her promise to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and ban fire­works to­tal­ly and re­move Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der for call­ing for a boy­cott of a law-abid­ing pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­ny.”

Pub­lic pres­sure is al­so grow­ing on­line. A Change.org pe­ti­tion start­ed by Ish­mael Tarou­ba call­ing for a ban on loud fire­works had 1,919 ver­i­fied sig­na­tures, in­clud­ing 1,160 added by yes­ter­day.

TTSP­CA chair­man Si­ta Ku­ruvil­la said her or­gan­i­sa­tion had warned from the start that the law would not work be­cause it left po­lice to mon­i­tor noise they could not eas­i­ly trace. She said a TTSP­CA sur­vey re­ceived about 300 re­spons­es in­di­cat­ing that peo­ple were ig­nor­ing the per­mit­ted days and hours.

“We have felt from the be­gin­ning that it is un­work­able leg­is­la­tion.”

Cleghorn wants an out­right ban or for fire­works to be lim­it­ed to trained per­son­nel.

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions to the po­lice ser­vice and con­tact­ed En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Joth Singh. Re­spons­es were pend­ing at press time.