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J'Ouvert revellery on Tragerete Road, Port of Spain during Carnival on March 3, 2025.. - LINDY-ANN BACHOO, Citizens Against Noise Pollution (CANPTT) vice president, gave a cautious welcome to news that the Environmental Management Authority (EMA) will enact several measures to curb noise pollution at Carnival, talking to Newsday on January 15.
The EMA seeks better EMA oversight of events seeking noise variation, better analysis of complaints and better microphone checks where possible.
The authority offered four proposals.
The EMA website will publish all notices for noise variations, event applications must supply maps of proximity to residential areas, the EMA will protect high-risk areas like hospitals, and the EMA will monitor events with a history of noise complaints.
Bachoo was optimistic yet cautious. She feared many EMA proposals relied on promoters regulating themselves.
With the EMA publicly offering a guide, she alerted that this let promoters manage their events.
"Who is checking the 'before' and the 'after'? That's our concern.
"We have these noise mitigation plans that would have been submitted and they may sound nice and flowery and very procedural on paper."
She asked if an EMA official would visit a day before the event to ensure there were sound barriers and care in the setting up of loud speakers.
"Is there an EMA official going with a check-list to ensure that the noise mitigation plan that they submitted is in fact executed on the day?"
Bachoo viewed an EMA guidance document as saying the promoter must set up a noise complain hotline.
"What happens when a citizen calls that event line and no one is answering?
"Or someone gives them a very platonic or conciliatory answer, but yet there is no real time intervention?" She viewed the EMA's guidelines of leaving a lot to the promoter.
"Let's be real. In the last decade or more, self-regulation has been non-existent on behalf of these fete and large-scale events and the promoters. So that's a real concern.
"The other thing that we noted is that the in guidebook itself, we have not noted what are the regulatory penalties."
She said if a promoter breached his own noise mitigation plans, what penalty would he face for violation? "And if they were repeat offenders, what would happen?"
Bachoo said, "It is a good start but there needs to be much more attention paid to the execution and enforcement for the event planners."
She wondered if the EMA's latest proposals in fact offered weaker protection to the community.
"It prioritises event approval online.
"It is more as if we are about events approval rather than doing some very strict adherence to protect citizens.
"Because we are not sure of the penalties." She was also not sure how people would fare calling noise-complaint lines run by promoters.
"On the day of the event, I call this line and there is no one answering it, what is the next step?"
She said if a complainant calls a police station to complain about a noisy event, police officers are allegedly reluctant to step in to address noisy entertainment venues.
Bachoo likewise said the EMA has a lack of staffing and resources to monitor noisy events.
"By the EMA's own admission, they are only there got half-hour to monitor.
"Are they telling us now they are going to stay for the duration of the event? Will they be there for more than half-hour?"
She was concerned about a trigger plan proposed by the EMA whenever sound levels reach unacceptable levels.
"In times past, trying to get onto a promoter and trying to tell him at the height of his event that if he could lower the decibel level has never proven effective.
"That has never been a safeguard for residents in their communities."
She cited a 2023 joint select committee (JSC) hearing in 2023, where EMA then-CEO Haydn Romano said the EMA had 13 officers but needed 40.
"They must be there for the duration of the event.
"History has shown us the EMA is here most of the time for the half-hour for which there is official monitoring there.
"But after that half-hour it is really left up to them."
Lamenting the idea of profit before people, she chided certain promoters.
"This is where we have people being indifferent and quite frankly not caring whether their business affects anybody else, once they are paid at the end of the night."
English (US) ·