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.

Dur­ing the com­mit­tee stage, Scot­land’s on­line per­mit ap­pli­ca­tion sys­tem was ac­cept­ed. Sec­tion 101(e)(4) was amend­ed to clar­i­fy that the “mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion re­spon­si­ble for the mu­nic­i­pal­i­ty in which the fire­works are to be dis­charged” will over­see com­pli­ance. The per­mit pe­ri­od was ex­tend­ed from 14 to 28 days to re­flect op­er­a­tional re­al­i­ties.

Scot­land al­so want­ed sec­tion 6 dropped en­tire­ly. Clause 6 amend­ed the Ev­i­dence Act to al­low video record­ings from mo­bile phones, tablets, or sim­i­lar de­vices to be ad­mis­si­ble as ev­i­dence. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie ad­dressed con­cerns over clause 6.

He cit­ed the Tay­lor and Chief Con­sta­ble of Cheshire case, ex­plain­ing that ad­mis­si­bil­i­ty is a mat­ter of weight, not le­gal­i­ty. Je­re­mie clar­i­fied that the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice is­sues per­mits, while oth­er agen­cies have no­ti­fi­ca­tion or ad­vi­so­ry roles.

Clause 6’s lan­guage was al­so ad­just­ed from “shall be” to “may be” ad­mis­si­ble, en­sur­ing courts re­tain dis­cre­tion while ad­dress­ing con­cerns about ma­nip­u­lat­ed footage and ev­i­den­tial bur­dens.

Symon De­No­bri­ga, MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, stressed that leg­is­la­tion alone is in­suf­fi­cient to ad­dress fire­works-re­lat­ed is­sues. Re­call­ing work by a sub­com­mit­tee in­clud­ing Min­is­ters of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Agri­cul­ture, Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, he said the bill must bal­ance pub­lic wel­fare with in­dus­try needs.

MPs agreed that en­force­ment is crit­i­cal. With­out clear op­er­a­tional plans de­tail­ing per­son­nel, re­sources, re­port­ing mech­a­nisms, and penal­ties, the law risks be­ing sym­bol­ic rather than pro­tec­tive.