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Region Three ranks complete training in noise management
– Commander cites urgency for GPF’s Decibel meters calibration
Commander Errol Watts briefing the ranks during the training session.
Kaieteur News – As 23 police ranks, yesterday, successfully completed a one-day training session in noise management, the Region 3 Commander, Errol Watts, has noted the urgent need for the calibration of Decibel meters owned by the Guyana Police Force (GPF).
The training session was held at the Leonora Technical and Vocational Institute located on the West Coast of Demerara (and facilitated by Senior Environmental Officers of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)). Those officers were Candacie Brower-Thompson, Tashana Redmond and Ladonna Kissoon.
According to a release by GPF, the EPA collaborated with the Region Three Commander to train the ranks. The policemen received both theoretical and practical training in noise control studies. The ranks were also educated on the EPA’s role in environment protection and noise management. They were updated as well on EPA’s Noise Regulation Legal Services. Watts also refreshed them on GPF’s noise regulation policy.
Speaking with this newspaper yesterday, Watts highlighted that the training session is the fourth held by EPA and that his ranks are now better edified in dealing with frequent complaints of noise nuisance.
He said that his division has been inundated with noise nuisance complaints both “by day and by night.”
Watts stated also that motor vehicles with amplifiers and households with very large sound systems for domestic purposes have been very inconsiderate when playing music.
Citizens, according to the EPA’s website, are advised to desist from emitting noise level above the prescribed 100db (decibel) recreational limit.
Kaieteur News had reported back in August, that EPA lacked equipment to measure noise nuisance. Questioned about the how ranks will be able to measure the level of noise nuisance emitted by perpetrators, Watts said that GPF has Decibel meters in stock but they are not calibrated. With the frequent complaints from persons affected by noise nuisance, the Commander said that there is urgent need for the instruments to be calibrated. This media house has learnt from a source that the meters were recently donated to GPF by the Chinese Government.
Watts further told this newspaper that the reasons behind the union between the GPF and the EPA in training the ranks are simply because “the Summary Jurisdiction Act Section174 does not provide stiff punishment for perpetrators.”
The Act, Section 174 A (1) states “No person shall, in any road, street, public place or land or in any building premises, by operating or causing or suffering to be operated any stereo set, juke box, radio, wireless loud speaker, gramophone, amplifier, automatic piano or similar instrument of music, or by any other means whatsoever, make or cause or suffer to be made any noise which shall be so loud and so continuous or repetitive as to cause a nuisance to occupants of any premises in the neighbourhood.”
Section 174 A (2) further states, “Any person who contravenes the provisions of subsection (1) shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine of one thousand dollars and to imprisonment for three months.”
However, under the EPA’s (Noise Management) Regulations (2000), defaulters can be fined up to $700,000 and face up to one year imprisonment.
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