A Decibel Meter Is Not a Deterrent: The Kingston Seawall Pilot and the Enforcement Guyana Keeps Skipping

A Decibel Meter Is Not a Deterrent: The Kingston Seawall Pilot and the Enforcement Guyana Keeps Skipping

OPINION BY : Staff Writer –August 2026

The Kingston Seawall now has decibel-meter signs, blinking out real-time noise readings as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest effort to confront the nuisance that has long tormented nearby residents, disturbed public spaces, and tested the patience of citizens who simply want peace after dark.

On its face, the initiative is sensible. Noise is not imaginary. It is measurable. And it is entirely reasonable for operators, patrons and the public to know when the sound they are producing has crossed from entertainment into intrusion.

But Guyana has reached the stage where the public must ask a harder question: is the Government building an enforcement system—or merely installing another public display of official concern?

A decibel sign cannot issue a warning. It cannot stop a reckless operator from turning a public space into a private nightclub. It cannot seize equipment, suspend an authorization, prosecute a repeat offender, or comfort a family whose children cannot sleep because someone has decided that their profits outrank the public’s right to peace.

A meter can measure the problem. It cannot solve it.

The law already exists

This is what makes the latest announcement so troubling. The country is not suffering because nobody has ever heard of noise regulation. Guyana already has noise-management rules. There are permissible limits. There are Environmental Authorization requirements. There are penalties. There is an Environmental Protection Agency. There is a Guyana Police Force.

So why is excessive noise still treated in far too many places as a mere inconvenience—something for citizens to endure, complain about repeatedly, and ultimately surrender to?

The answer lies not in the absence of laws, but in the absence of dependable enforcement.

Too often, the public is told to report noise. Then the report is made. The music continues. The police may or may not arrive. The operator may lower the volume for ten minutes, then turn it back up once the patrol vehicle disappears around the corner. The residents are left with the same disturbance, the same exhaustion, and the same sinking realization that the law seems firm only on paper.

That is not regulation. That is a ritual of complaint without remedy.

EPA and police: Who does what?

The EPA’s role should be clear: establish the lawful standard, monitor and document breaches, regulate environmentally authorized operations, impose compliance conditions, and take administrative or legal action against repeat offenders.

The police role should be equally clear: respond quickly where public peace is being disturbed, require the offending activity to be reduced or stopped, identify those responsible, preserve the peace, and support prosecution where an offence has been committed.

Neither agency can perform the other’s role alone. The EPA may have the technical capacity to measure noise, but it does not have the everyday street-level presence required to stop an escalating nuisance at midnight. The police may have the power to intervene on the ground, but they need reliable standards, certified readings, and a clear regulatory basis for action.

That is why the partnership matters. But collaboration must mean more than both agencies appearing in the same press release.

It must mean one functioning chain of accountability:

Alert. Response. Measurement. Warning. Order. Follow-up. Sanction.

If that chain breaks after the meter records the noise, then the entire exercise becomes little more than a taxpayer-funded electronic witness—watching the breach occur, displaying the breach in public, and doing nothing meaningful to stop it.

The missing public answers

The EPA and the National Data Management Authority must now provide the public with more than polished language about “education,” “awareness,” and “voluntary compliance.”

Those are admirable words. But they become empty words when they are used to soften the consequences for persistent offenders while residents continue to suffer.

The public deserves direct answers:

⇒ What is the precise noise limit at the Kingston Seawall during the day and at night?

⇒ Is that limit displayed beside the real-time reading so that people can understand whether the noise is lawful or excessive?

⇒ How long must a sound level remain above the threshold before the EPA and police are alerted?

⇒ Who receives that alert, and what response time is expected?

⇒ What happens when an operator refuses to comply?

⇒ How many warnings will be issued before enforcement begins?

⇒ Will repeat offenders face permit conditions, suspension, closure, charges, or prosecution?

⇒ Will the agencies publish monthly data showing alerts, inspections, complaints, warnings, repeat offenders, and cases brought before the courts?

⇒ What did the system cost to buy, install, maintain, calibrate, connect, monitor, and staff?

These are not hostile questions. They are the ordinary questions taxpayers are entitled to ask whenever public money is spent and public authority is exercised.

Voluntary compliance has limits

There is room for education. A first-time operator may not understand the applicable standard. A public display can encourage prompt adjustment. A reasonable warning can correct conduct without turning every nuisance into a confrontation.

But voluntary compliance is a beginning, not an enforcement policy.

The man who has already ignored residents, ignored warnings, ignored the law, and ignored repeated complaints does not need another educational opportunity. He needs consequences.

The business that profits from disturbing an entire neighborhood should not be allowed to treat a modest warning as a cost-free operating expense. The promoter who advertises a night of noise, congestion and disorder should not be permitted to hide behind the excuse that nobody told him the music was too loud while a decibel meter glows in plain sight.

The right of one operator to make money ends where the public’s right to sleep, study, work, recover, worship and live in peace begins.

Value for money, not technology theatre

No sensible person should oppose the use of technology to improve regulation. Real-time monitoring can be useful. Data can expose patterns. Sensors can identify repeat hotspots. Public signs can make operators more accountable. A properly designed system could make enforcement faster, fairer and less dependent on who knows whom.

But technology is only value for money when it produces measurable public benefit.

The EPA must therefore show whether the investment leads to fewer sustained breaches, fewer complaints, faster responses, stronger compliance and meaningful action against repeat offenders. If the Government cannot demonstrate those results, then the question will be unavoidable: what exactly did the taxpayer purchase—noise control, or another shiny symbol of concern?

Guyana has had enough of governance by announcement. Enough of initiatives that are launched with fanfare, photographed for publicity, and then quietly left to gather dust while the underlying problem remains untouched.

The seawall does not need a decorative scoreboard for disorder. It needs a system that works.

The public must not be the enforcement arm

Residents should not be forced to become nocturnal evidence-gatherers—recording videos from their homes, begging for intervention, making repeated calls, confronting operators at personal risk, and then being told to “report the matter” again next weekend.

That is an abdication of state responsibility.

Citizens pay taxes for agencies to regulate. They pay taxes for police to enforce the law. They should not be required to beg for the peace and quiet that the law already promises them. Let the decibel signs remain. Let the sensors collect the data. Let operators see, in real time, the point at which their activity becomes unlawful or unreasonable.

But let there be no confusion: the real test is what happens after the number turns red.

If the alert brings a rapid response; if the response produces compliance; if repeat offenders are identified and punished; if the data are published and the costs are justified—then the EPA and the police would have built something useful.

If not, the public will be left staring at another digital monument to a familiar Guyanese failure: a Government capable of measuring the nuisance, but unwilling to enforce against it.

—The Board