The noise continues

Editor: The people who reside in Arnos Vale are grateful to Mrs Louise Mitchell Joseph for expressing her displeasure with the noise that was generated at the ET Joshua Airport on the night of Saturday, February 18, where the Carnival Development Corporation launched its celebrations.

The noise started in the daytime, when there were short periods of excessively loud music. From about 8 p.m., the same excessively loud music continued through to 3 a.m. on Sunday, during which time many of the residents of the surrounding areas were not able to sleep.

Excessively loud music coming from entertainment houses in the area of Arnos Vale has been a perennial issue. The officers of the Calliaqua Police Station can testify that there had been many calls from residents in the wee hours of the morning, asking the officers to address the situation.

The residents have now generally concluded that calling Calliaqua Station on these matters is a futile exercise. I myself have made several such reports over the years and although I can give credit that efforts to address the offending situation were made on occasions, the bombardment has been carried on with impurity over the years, despite the fact that very senior people in the Police Force were made aware of the situation.

I have now given up on reporting any such incident to the folks in Calliaqua or Kingstown, as I have concluded that keeping the peace is no longer considered to be effective policing.

Furthermore, I have concluded that coping with this unbearable noise two or three nights per week and until two or three o’clock in the morning is the ‘new norm’ for us in these areas, considering the obvious indifference of the authorities.

I am inclined to believe that the folks responsible for all that noise at the ET Joshua Airport on Saturday may have taken their cue from those officiating at the ULP pre-election rally in December 2015, when we were shocked out our sleep by an excessively loud boom of amplified music coming from the Arnos Vale sporting complex. Then we heard a voice say “One two, three testing”.

As Mrs Louise Joseph pointed out in her submission to IWitness News, we are crippling ourselves from several standpoints. It is clear that we need to have serious discussions on several subjects as we contemplate our way forward.

Policing is certainly one of those subjects that cannot be excluded from those discussions!

I have noted that on several occasions when Prime Minister Gonsalves addressed the citizens, he had emphatically pronounced that we, SVG, would have to work harder and smarter. But how can people be expected to work harder when they are being deprived of their rest between nine in the night and three in the morning? Would a worker be up to his optimal level of intellectual alertness, in the discharge of his duties, after a long night of sleeplessness because of excessively loud noise in his neighbourhood?

It may be well found that a lot of the shoddiness for which some police officers are being condemned, in relation to criminal matters coming before the Courts, had origin in the lack of proper rest at nights. This may well hold for workers in any other areas of responsibility.

While the politicians who are given the responsibility and honour to govern, driven by egotism, are seemingly preoccupied efforts, our country SVG, long known as “the land of the blessed”, seems now headed for a calamitous end, wrapped in “a shroud of blight.”

Leroy Providence