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The Sum­ma­ry Of­fences (Amend­ment) Bill, which has been called the Fire­works Bill, was passed unan­i­mous­ly in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day with amend­ments pro­posed by the Op­po­si­tion, in a re­newed spir­it of ca­ma­raderie rarely seen across the aisles.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar thanked the Op­po­si­tion for their in­put and shared a per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence at a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ral­ly, where fire­works caused her eye in­jury, re­quir­ing ur­gent care. “And I had great dis­com­fort, but I thank God that I did not lose my eye­sight. I did not lose my eye­sight,” she said. The bill man­dates per­mits for fire­works un­der nar­row, pre­scribed cir­cum­stances and es­tab­lish­es re­strict­ed zones where fire­works are pro­hib­it­ed.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Port-of-Spain South, Kei­th Scot­land, pro­posed an on­line per­mit sys­tem to stream­line ap­pli­ca­tions and re­duce bu­reau­crat­ic de­lays. He al­so called for the re-in­clu­sion of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA), and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions in the per­mit ap­proval process, cit­ing their lo­cal knowl­edge and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise. Scot­land al­so ques­tioned ex­tend­ing per­mit time­lines, call­ing it im­prac­ti­cal for busi­ness­es.