Carisa Lee

In the com­ing days, Gov­ern­ment will re­veal its plans and theme for In­de­pen­dence Day (Au­gust 31). This year, Trinidad and To­ba­go will cel­e­brate 60 years of self-gov­er­nance.

On Au­gust 30, 1962, at mid­night, the Union Jack (British flag) was low­ered and the T&T’s flag was raised for the first time.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga, who is part of a com­mit­tee set up to plan events to com­mem­o­rate this mile­stone, the team, head­ed by Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, is in the last stages of plan­ning.

“We should be get­ting the fi­nal plan and bud­get from them to present to Cab­i­net,” de No­bri­ga said.

He said To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is al­so part of the plan­ning process.

He said so far, they have ideas for gala and cul­tur­al events which will be host­ed be­tween In­de­pen­dence Day and Re­pub­lic Day, adding some events will run through­out all of 2022.

“How­ev­er, there are nu­mer­ous events that the pri­vate sec­tor, civ­il so­ci­ety wants to get in­volved in,” he added.

The pan­dem­ic caused the an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade and fire­works dis­play to be sus­pend­ed for two years and now that COVID-19 cas­es have de­creased and T&T has reached a mile­stone, de No­bri­ga said there may be a ver­sion of these events.

“Those are in the con­ver­sa­tion. I know na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is look­ing at a ver­sion of that… but we have to bal­ance this right­ful want­i­ng to cel­e­brate 60 years with the re­al­i­ty that we are com­ing out of COVID,” he ex­plained.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of Ar­rive Alive Kathryn Cleghorn has ap­pealed for the safe­ty of an­i­mals, es­pe­cial­ly those at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo, to be con­sid­ered in the plan­ning of the events mark­ing the oc­ca­sion. She said cel­e­bra­tions should meet all the cri­te­ria and en­sure that every­one is hap­py.

“What’s a cel­e­bra­tion if oth­er crea­tures are suf­fer­ing through it… it can­not be that fire­works are a medi­um of cel­e­bra­tion be­cause it cas­es too much harm and death,” Cleghorn asked.

Cleghorn said her com­mu­ni­ty is to­tal­ly against cel­e­bra­tions which cre­ate un­nec­es­sary noise pol­lu­tion and sug­gest­ed drone fire­works or silent fire­works. She said they have writ­ten nu­mer­ous gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies to ask that the use of fire­works be reg­u­lat­ed.

“We need the sup­port,” she said.

In 2019, an 18-month-old kan­ga­roo al­leged­ly died as a re­sult of the trau­ma ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing In­de­pen­dence Day fire­works. His name was Joey.