Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain North/ St Ann’s West Stu­art Young does not sup­port fire­works be­ing sold to mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Young made this point as he again vis­it­ed the charred re­mains of homes in his con­stituen­cy which were de­stroyed af­ter a fire on New Year Day.

The fire de­stroyed four hous­es on Quar­ry Street af­ter res­i­dents were us­ing fire­works and lanterns to cel­e­brate the turn of the new year.

Twen­ty-five peo­ple were left home­less.

The MP’s call came af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi an­nounced that he had al­ready draft­ed leg­is­la­tion on fire­works that are now be­ing pre­pared for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

“I place square­ly the blame of this un­for­tu­nate fire on a lantern which is a type of fire­work land­ing on the roof as wit­nessed by an eye­wit­ness and what we have al­ready be­gun is that there was al­ready draft leg­is­la­tion that was brought to the Cab­i­net but the Cab­i­net felt with re­spect to fire­works that we should send the leg­is­la­tion out for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion be­cause that is an is­sue that would have wide-rang­ing views and let’s have the pub­lic com­ment on it,” Young said.

He added: “But my per­son­al view and opin­ion, which will on­ly form part of the Cab­i­net con­ver­sa­tion as we de­cide the pol­i­cy, is that we should not have fire­works sold to mem­bers of the pub­lic and there are vary­ing views but the Cab­i­net felt col­lec­tive­ly that we should have pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion done and let the pub­lic put for­ward their views and that would come back to us as a Cab­i­net and then we would take a de­ci­sion as to what should be tak­en for­ward to Par­lia­ment.”

He said Trinidad and To­ba­go is not unique in its con­cerns about fire­works.

He not­ed that in coun­tries in Eu­rope, in­clud­ing in Ger­many and Hol­land, fire­works were for the New Year hol­i­day but yet peo­ple were break­ing the law and un­for­tu­nate­ly chil­dren and oth­ers were in­jured in some in­ci­dents.

“The Gov­ern­ment has tak­en the first step to­wards com­ing up to some­thing but it is bet­ter than the peo­ple speak and let’s get their views and draft the nec­es­sary leg­is­la­tion be­cause there may be those who hold a sim­i­lar view like mine where fire­works should not be sold to mem­bers of the pub­lic,” he said.

Young was ac­com­pa­nied by the chair­man of the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) Anil Juter­am and coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don who went to as­sist those af­fect­ed by the fire.

Juter­am said, “Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion this un­for­tu­nate cir­cum­stance we are all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and that is the mes­sage, I want to send across the po­lit­i­cal di­vide, at the end of the day we are all from dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal ve­hi­cles but when there are hu­man­i­tar­i­an is­sues and com­pas­sion­ate is­sues we should come to­geth­er as hu­man be­ings and we are do­ing every­thing with­in our pow­ers to as­sist and I have writ­ten and al­ready made calls to cer­tain cor­po­rate per­sons in my area to as­sist be­cause at the end of the day if it is five hous­es. It is go­ing to be a lot of peo­ple af­fect­ed and our du­ty is to come to­geth­er.”

The SGRC do­nat­ed mat­tress­es, kitchen uten­sils and per­son­al items.

Ron­don said, “When I saw that fire my heart went out to those af­fect­ed and I was prompt­ed to act to help those whose homes were de­stroyed on the first day of the year. I said that I must come, I must help these fam­i­lies in some way. (I’m) not en­joy­ing the best of health but I must do some­thing see­ing that MP Young has been so gen­er­ous to the peo­ple of To­co San­gre Grande. San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion is twinned with Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion and my du­ty is to as­sist and they al­ways say when your neigh­bour house is on fire wet yours and we are here as a cor­po­ra­tion to an­oth­er cor­po­ra­tion.”