There’s some good news and bad news for firecracker manufacturers whose products may have provided some joy to revelers during Christmas and New Year as well as fiesta celebrations but had also caused accidental, unwanted injuries and even death for the past several years.
First, the bad news for these firecracker makers; President Rodrigo Duterte said he is open to signing an executive order for a nationwide ban on firecrackers in order to spare revelers especially children from incurring injuries and grievous, bloody wounds such as amputated fingers.
The President said he wanted the entire country to be like Davao City insofar as a total firecracker ban is concerned, and he explained that he ordered the firecracker ban after seeing that most of the victims were children.
And like the liquor ban and curfew law which his administration imposed following his assumption as president, the firecracker ban has been supported by the Department of Health (DOH) which sought the ban as early as January this year.
The good news at least for these firecracker producers is that the ban won’t be in effect this year as the President acknowledged that it won’t be fair for the manufacturers and their employees, including those in the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu who’ve spent the past year producing their pyrotechnics by the ton in time for the Christmas and New Year revelry, perhaps their most lucrative period for the year.
But the President’s statement should be taken as a reminder and a warning that private purchase and use of firecrackers will be prohibited. As to whether the ban will be totaled, i.e. even local governments and communities will be banned from using firecrackers remains to be seen.
Health secretary Paylyn Rosell-Libial said the President will sign the executive order on December 5, putting the firecracker industry on notice that sales of their products will be strictly regulated starting next September, that time of year when they go full production mode for their pyrotechnics.
But that’s the thing. It is time for Filipinos to change their habits about using firecrackers on their own, and let the experts do it. New Year revelers around the world like those in the US celebrate the occasion by watching the fireworks display staged by firecracker experts in such venerable venues as Times Square in New York.
During Sinulog here in Cebu City, pyrotechnics firms launch fireworks displays to mark the event in the city’s malls to the delight of onlookers and revelers who are content to watch it at the comfort of their offices and near the venues.
Aside from the manufacturers, the only people objecting to a firecracker ban are those who don’t mind risking an amputation or think they won’t sustain any firecracker injury at least until it happens to them. Why entertain that possibility?