Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

It has been a long-stand­ing tra­di­tion in T&T for fam­i­lies to come to­geth­er on De­cem­ber 31 to await mid­night where they would set off fire­works to bring in the New Year.

De­spite hun­dreds of peo­ple los­ing their jobs over this past year, it ap­pears that cit­i­zens would still be cel­e­brat­ing the start of 2019 with fan­fare as fire­works re­tail­ers said sales are hold­ing steady, if not, bet­ter than usu­al and an­tic­i­pate high­er sales as the end of the month draws near­er.

“Sales does usu­al­ly be the last day, but things are hold­ing steady…usu­al­ly, that’s when Tri­nis wait last minute…that’s how it al­ways has been,” said Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Fire­pow­er Fire­works Khalid Ghany in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

For the past 17 years, Cyn­thia Sama­roo, of Princes Town, has been re­tail­ing fire­works on be­half of Fire One Fire­works and has had the same ex­pe­ri­ence. She said for her, she has no­ticed peak sales around two days be­fore “Old Years” which she al­so at­trib­uted to last-minute shop­ping by Tri­nis.

For the past ten years or so, she has been sell­ing out of a tent lo­cat­ed across the high­way from the Gulf City Mall in San Fer­nan­do.

De­spite idle sales at the be­gin­ning of the Christ­mas sea­son, she said their sales have been pick­ing up and she an­tic­i­pates in­creased sales from to­mor­row.

“I ac­tu­al­ly see im­prove­ment (from pre­vi­ous years’ sales). Peo­ple buy­ing, they not hes­i­tat­ing to shop…these few days were bet­ter than last year by far,” Sama­roo said.

She al­so re­it­er­at­ed that safe­ty is a top pri­or­i­ty when cus­tomers are us­ing fire­works. “They shouldn’t set it off in roads and use wide open ar­eas like grounds and stuff to set off the fire­works,” she said.

Dur­ing Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions this year, 11 peo­ple were left home­less af­ter fires, which were al­leged­ly start­ed by the mis­use of fire­works by chil­dren, de­stroyed their home.

In a state­ment, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty said line Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has signed the Ex­plo­sives (Pro­hi­bi­tion of Scratch Bombs) Or­der 2018, in keep­ing with Cab­i­net’s an­nounce­ment on No­vem­ber 22 to of­fi­cial­ly ban scratch bombs in­to T&T.

It said the or­der was made by the min­is­ter in keep­ing with Sec­tion 37 of the Ex­plo­sives Act, Chap­ter 16:02.

The or­der pro­hibits per­sons from man­u­fac­tur­ing, im­port­ing, keep­ing, con­vey­ing or sell­ing a scratch bomb.

Per­sons found breach­ing the or­der may be li­able up­on in­dict­ment to a fine of $20,000 or ten years im­pris­on­ment or for­fei­ture of the items. The or­der was al­so pub­lished as le­gal no­tice dat­ed De­cem­ber 28, 2018 and takes ef­fect im­me­di­ate­ly.