Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

There have been no ma­jor re­port­ed in­ci­dents of an­i­mals be­ing harmed by the In­de­pen­dence Day fire­works.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Founder of An­i­mals 360 Foun­da­tion and the Fire­works Ac­tion Coali­tion of T&T, Roger Mar­shall, said things were not as bad this time as they were for Old Year’s Night and Di­vali Cel­e­bra­tions.

Mar­shall not­ed that since there was less use of fire­works in res­i­den­tial ar­eas, there have been few­er re­ports of an­i­mals be­ing in­jured or stray­ing from their homes, but, he said he re­ceived calls about an­i­mals be­ing trau­ma­tised by the noise.

He said while this is an im­prove­ment, some­thing needs to be done about the big­ger dis­plays.

“In­de­pen­dence is not re­al­ly a bad time for us, be­cause you don’t have as much con­sumer use of fire­works. It’s re­al­ly the big na­tion­al dis­plays that im­pact us for In­de­pen­dence… Our on­go­ing con­cern is that they con­tin­ue to have this grand dis­play at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah that is so close to the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo. We just don’t un­der­stand. Are these peo­ple with­out hearts? Are they to­tal­ly heart­less? How can they put our an­i­mals in a zoo that is sup­posed to be pro­tect­ed? How could they ex­pose them to this grand fire­works dis­play? That was atro­cious,” he said.

Mar­shall said the re­al goal is to get fire­works out of the hands of the gen­er­al pub­lic.

He called on At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour to speed up the process to get the Fire­works Bill passed since it has been in the works for too long.

“We need to get the job done, we need to get the bill in­to par­lia­ment, de­bat­ed and passed and get it done. It’s over 20 years that this has been on the draw­ing board, leg­is­la­tion for fire­works use, over 20 years. This is ridicu­lous,” he added.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo who said they did not want to com­ment un­til they sent out their for­mal press re­lease. They added that they are cur­rent­ly tak­ing stock of their an­i­mals as part of a post-fire­works as­sess­ment.

On Thurs­day night, a video cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, show­ing a po­lice horse es­cap­ing from the Mount­ed Po­lice Unit in S. James due to the fire­works.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar, who said the video was an old one re­cir­cu­lat­ing.

“Noth­ing of the sort hap­pened last night (Thurs­day) at the Mount­ed Branch. When I com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the head of the Mount­ed Branch, he would have in­di­cat­ed that all the hors­es were in their sta­bles, the sta­bles were se­cured, the com­pound was se­cured. That video is just an old video that some­body would have cir­cu­lat­ed,” he said.

Mys­tar is ap­peal­ing to peo­ple to ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion be­fore spread­ing fake news.