Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

With New Year’s Day less than a week away, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs Kennedy Swarats­ingh is urg­ing the pub­lic to be con­sid­er­ate in their use of fire­works for Old Year’s Night cel­e­bra­tions by obey­ing the law.

Yes­ter­day, Swarats­ingh, who is the line min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), which ad­dress­es in­stances of noise pol­lu­tion, told Guardian Me­dia that the re­cent­ly pro­claimed leg­is­la­tion clear­ly pro­vides the guide­lines for fire­works use.

He ac­knowl­edged that while Old Year’s Night was tra­di­tion­al­ly a time of cel­e­bra­tion, which used fire­works, such fes­tiv­i­ties should not cause dis­tress or in­con­ve­nience to oth­ers.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, while we want peo­ple to have a good time, we al­so want peo­ple to be, as you said to be con­sid­er­ate to those around them and be mind­ful that our en­joy­ment shouldn’t in­con­ve­nience oth­ers who them­selves want to en­joy it just as much as we do.”

Re­fer­ring to the leg­is­la­tion, Swarats­ingh al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic that fire­works use was not al­lowed near hos­pi­tals, an­i­mal shel­ters or the air­port as he urged the pub­lic to re­view the leg­is­la­tion.

The pro­vi­sions for fire­works use are in­clud­ed in the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Act 2025, which was of­fi­cial­ly pro­claimed on De­cem­ber 19.

The Bill was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on De­cem­ber 9 and by the Sen­ate one day lat­er.

Fail­ure to com­ply with the leg­is­la­tion re­sults in the is­suance of a tick­et for which a fine must be paid.

Sec­tion 99 part (2) of the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion states that any­one in­ter­est­ed in ap­ply­ing for a per­mit to use fire­works should ap­ply to the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice with the stip­u­la­tions that the ap­pli­cant be over the age of 18, the ap­pli­cant should spec­i­fy the type and amount of fire­works in­tend­ed for use, as well as the lo­ca­tion, time and du­ra­tion of the in­tend­ed use.

Once grant­ed, a hold­er of a fire­works per­mit would be re­quired to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion to the Fire Ser­vice, the EMA, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty and the nec­es­sary Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion where the fire­works would be det­o­nat­ed.

Re­tail­er, cus­tomers

wel­come new law

Speak­ing dur­ing the an­nu­al Box­ing Day sale at his Ma­coya ware­house on Fri­day, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Fire­One Fire­works An­dre Abra­ham said he didn’t feel that the re­cent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion would ham­per the en­joy­ment of the prod­uct, not­ing that it cre­at­ed a frame­work for re­spon­si­ble fire­works use.

He stressed that Fire­One’s mis­sion has al­ways pro­mot­ed re­spon­si­ble use of fire­works at spe­cif­ic oc­ca­sions.

“There should be a con­se­quence to bad be­hav­iour, so this new leg­is­la­tion is in line with what we have been pro­mot­ing for the last 30 years, ex­cept now it’s of­fi­cial, so it’s per­fect­ly in line with our big vi­sion of build­ing an in­dus­try where re­spect, cour­tesy, kind­ness and be­ing our broth­er’s keep­er is the ide­ol­o­gy of the day.”

Abra­ham al­so di­rect­ly spoke to fire­works users and urged them to be con­sid­er­ate in their use.

“Use the prod­uct as it was de­signed to be used, use it as a means to bring our fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er, be re­spect­ful of your neigh­bours, use the prod­uct on­ly at mid­night for 30 min­utes and then stop.

“No one likes to hear noise from fire­works or any oth­er de­vice out­side of the spe­cif­ic time.”

While at the ware­house, throngs of cus­tomers packed the aisles with bas­kets and trol­leys filled with rock­ets and fire­crack­ers and oth­er va­ri­eties of fire­works.

Abra­ham said that while it was too ear­ly to say whether this year’s Box­ing Day sale saw the same turnout as pre­vi­ous years, based on the ap­pear­ance of the crowd and on­line or­ders, he said this year’s sale ap­peared to be just as pro­duc­tive.

One long-time pa­tron, Re­bec­ca Ohree, said she hoped the pub­lic would be re­spon­si­ble in their use of fire­works this year, as she knows first-hand how dan­ger­ous the items can be.

“Be safe when you’re us­ing fire­works be­cause I have had fire­works that have blown back on me al­ready, and it re­al­ly wasn’t nice.

“So just be safe in all that you’re do­ing.”

An­oth­er cus­tomer, Wayne Ali, said he was in sup­port of the leg­is­la­tion as it would of­fer au­thor­i­ties a bet­ter chance of pre­vent­ing prop­er­ty dam­age or in­juries from the mis­use of fire­works.

“I’m hap­py they have it in place so they won’t have to be look­ing out all night to see if any­one is start­ing a fire all over the place. So it’s a good thing that they’re reg­u­lat­ing it and try­ing to con­trol it.”