Enforce law on noise at parties

THE EDITOR: The noise season is here once again. I was awakened on Saturday morning by party noise booming at 4 am. So of course I called my favourite police station, only to be told that “it is festival season” and that the party had permission to go until 10 am, so just bear with it.

My position was, though, that I was nowhere near this party. It was on Gordon Street, St Augustine, and I was in St Joseph near the hospital. Surely the permission could not extend to this kind of decibel level?

I was fortunate, I thought, to get a policeman on duty who actually said he would call the inspector who was on the site of the party and ask him to check on the decibel level. That was indeed progress.

My plea to the EMA and whichever division of the police gets together to approve parties, please enforce the law. Whatever levels you approve, please check on the party people at regular intervals.

Maybe it would also be a good time to discuss a need to stop approving parties within residential areas. All public parties should be held in commercial districts where the disruption to residents’ personal space is minimised. Surely a “house party” has no need for ten speaker boxes, or any at all.

Oh goodness, when will citizens get a fair deal?

Can we also get a working phone number for EMA supervisory personnel instead of calling the police who are clearly under-resourced to manage these events?

I have had previous calls to the police who got so upset with my complaints about a parang party with window-shattering volume that they eventually admitted that the party had “too many important people” attending for them to get involved. Imagine that!

We have to decide what kind of country we want to live in.

ANNE DE SILVA

St Joseph