Activists again call for tougher fireworks laws

Calls for tougher con­trols on fire­works are grow­ing af­ter Sat­ur­day’s dev­as­tat­ing fire in Port-of-Spain, which gut­ted a long-stand­ing elec­tri­cal re­pair busi­ness and de­stroyed two homes.

Cit­i­zens Against Noise Pol­lu­tion TT (CANPTT) vice-pres­i­dent for pub­lic re­la­tions Tama­ra Chatar and an­i­mal ac­tivist El­speth Dun­can are urg­ing au­thor­i­ties to take stronger ac­tion, ar­gu­ing that re­peat­ed warn­ings about the dan­gers of fire­works have not trans­lat­ed in­to mean­ing­ful en­force­ment.

Res­i­dents of Pic­cadil­ly Street told Guardian Me­dia that chil­dren had been set­ting off fire­works in the area for about 15 min­utes be­fore the blaze erupt­ed. The res­i­dents, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the use of fire­works has be­come a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in the neigh­bour­hood.