A new organisation, the Jamaica Association of Explosives Engineering Professionals (JAEEP), is proposing an overhaul of the act that regulates their work.

President of JAEEP, Lenox Gordon Snr, told the Observer that a thorough revision of the 1925 Gunpowder and Explosives Act is a priority item.

“We really need to go from top to bottom, because it is an Act from the 1920s,” Gordon said.

Managing director of the Bauxite Alumina Trading Company Coy Roache, who addressed the organisation’s recent official launch at Hotel Four Seasons, said he had helped work on a draft of what the new Act should look like. He said the current Act seems to have been put on a back burner by the Ministry of Works.

“They have made amendments to the Mining and Road Traffic Acts, but nothing for the Gunpowder and Explosives Act,” he said.

Roache said too many agencies were involved in administering the Act. Applicants for blasting licences, for example, are required to go through the Ministry of Works and the Commissioner of Mines.

“The dissemination of regulative authority does not augur well for good governance,” he said.

And even the granting of blasting licences is not covered under the Act. Instead, explosives engineers are required to have a letter of exemption, saying that even though they are not in the military, they have permission to carry and use explosives. These letters have no photo identification and no expiration date.

“I think we’ve gotten away with that because guns are easier to hold and fire,” Roache said.

Roache expressed concern that with general elections in the air, and the police’s bid to rid the streets of guns, criminals might turn to explosives.

“We might become a little Baghdad (Iraq) with explosives in the wrong hands,” he said.

Meanwhile, State Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, Victor Cummings, who gave the main address at the launch, said the JAEEP needs to work on improving the image of explosives professionals.

“Many Jamaicans become worried when they hear that there will be a blast site near them,” he said, adding that oftentimes the blast causes no unusual amount of rattling or dust.

Cummings said his ministry was looking at a reform of the mineral sector, a huge part of which has to do with blasting.