Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 25/Oct 07:14

Restore quiet to Trinidad and Tobago, please

THE EDITOR: Open letter to the Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary of the THA, government ministers and senators, members of the opposition and of the THA. I write to beg you to please table and pass legislation to restore quiet (as defined by the absence of unnecessary noise) to the country. The absolute disregard for people’s right to quiet is unacceptable. I grew up with quiet in this country. Sundays were always quiet. Tobago used to be quiet when I moved here from Trinidad in 1998. People did not blast music out of their cars nor homes. Men cut the grass with a swiper. Weed wackers and leaf blowers had not been invented yet. People respected their neighbours’ right to peace and quiet. Today, every single day of the week you might hear a weed wacker or a leaf blower. On the night of October 20 we celebrated Divali. What should have been a beautiful celebration of light, of good over evil, became a nightmare. And yet I live in the island whose motto is “Clean, green and serene.” It hasn’t been serene for 20 years. From just after 7 pm a series of loud explosions started. From the opened front door I saw fireworks. I had read (and have been told) that they are banned. These surely were not “silent” fireworks. I immediately called the police. The phone didn’t even ring but clicked off as out-of-service numbers do. Right then a friend called. Her dogs had been trembling for the past several hours because the neighbours’ teenaged boys were bursting bamboo “for fun.” She had tried to find out how much longer they were going to be doing this but they didn’t know. I told her about the loud fireworks in Canaan and that I hadn’t been able to reach the police. She said she would try. And had the same result: could not even get through by phone. How much longer do we have to put up with something that should be so easy to solve? Who is selling fireworks that sound like bombs if they are "banned?” C DE FREITAS Canaan The post Restore quiet to Trinidad and Tobago, please appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.