Month: March 2015

CEBU, Philippines – Owners of motor vehicles in Cebu City whose mufflers are modified to emit louder sounds may face higher fines, if not imprisonment.

The City Council has passed an ordinance that puts more teeth to a 1964 ordinance that requires the use of a “silencer” for all motor vehicles to avoid “loud and deafening blasts”.

Under the new ordinance authored by Councilor Roberto Cabarrubias, violators may be fined P3,000 for the first offense and P5,000 or imprisonment or not more than three months or both at the discretion of the court for the second offense.

“There is a need to make people act responsibly over the use of their property so as not to cause disturbance and annoyance to the public,” Cabarrubias said.

A muffler or a silencer is a device attached to vehicle exhaust pipes to help diminish the loud sound emitted by car engines.

“Those who use or operate any motor vehicle so modified or with removed muffler as to cause loud and unnecessary or unreasonable noise, including the noise resulting from exhaust, which is clearly audible from nearby properties and unreasonably disturbing to the quiet, comfort, or repose of other persons will be penalized,” Cabarrubias said.

Cabarrubias said vehicles are equipped with mufflers or silencers for anti-noise pollution, but there are vehicle owners that remove or modify the mufflers purposely “to make the sound emitted by exhaust pipes louder”.

Section 3(b) of the ordinance also prohibits the use or operation of “any motor vehicle that emits noise higher than 84 decibels even if not modified.”

Exempted from the rule are those driving a vehicle during a race and while the vehicle is on a racetrack, provided that the person has acquired written consent from the Office of the Mayor.

Mayor Michael Rama who supports the measure said the ordinance will help create a more peaceful environment for Cebu City.

“Anything that will already contribute noise is a public and security issue… it will intrude already (to) the right of an individual to have a peaceful living,” Rama said.

City Ordinance 309 (Anti-Noise Ordinance), as amended by City Ordinance Nos. 1313, 1705 and 1898, makes it unlawful for “any person to willfully cause loud and deafening blast of engines…of motor vehicles.”

The prohibition shall take effect from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. the following day. —/JMO (FREEMAN)

Where verbal abuse, sand and buckets of human waste have failed, a warning message blasted over and over again through a $41,900 speaker system appears to have succeeded.

Aggrieved residents in the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou declared victory this week after successfully routing packs of public dancers that had been gathering in a nearby park, according to state media reports.

As WSJ detailed last week, dancing in public — a form of exercise that boasts roughly 100 million adherents in China, most of them middle-aged and retired women — has become a flashpoint in the country’s drive to urbanize.

Squeezed by development, China’s happy-footed seniors have been forced to take their dancing to parks, public squares, parking lots and other areas where sound from their portable sound-systems often carry over into the homes of nearby residents.

Some beleaguered residents have decided to fight noise with noise. At Wenzhou’s Xin Guoguang apartment complex this weekend, 600 residents launched a tit-for-tat “counterattack,” pooling 260,000 yuan to buy six professional-quality speakers. According to the Communist Party-run Hangzhou Daily, they set the speakers up on a fourth-floor balcony across from the park and used them to blast an ear-splitting message — “Please respect the noise pollution laws of the People’s Republic of China and immediately cease illegal activities!” — over and over again for hours at a time.

The newspaper quoted residents complaining that hundreds of dancers filled the park from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., broadcasting music and disturbing their children’s studies. They tried many times asking the dancers to turn down the volume, they said, to no avail.

The head of the local residents committee, a man surnamed Wu, told the Hangzhou Daily that noise from the dancers had also affected the value of apartments in the area. “Everyone knows how loud it is here,” he said.

On Monday, representatives of the local administrative, environmental protection, park management and other bureaus responded to the speaker protest by convening a “noise in public squares” coordinating committee, according to a report posted on the website of the official Xinhua news agency. The committee agreed to set up a working group that would patrol the park. The residents have since dismantled the speaker system.

A day later, district officials said groups would have to register to hold activities in the park. They also said they would display decibel levels on electronic screens in the park to help dancers monitor their own noise levels.

“Some people might think it’s a lot of money to spend, but compared to the invisible losses we’ve suffered, it’s nothing,” Mr. Wu told Hangzhou Daily.

The Wenzhou group isn’t the first to prevail over public dancers by taking extreme measures. In November, a Beijing man successfully chased away a local dancing group by firing a shotgun in the air and unleashing three Tibetan mastiffs. He was later sentenced to six months in jail, but a neighbor of his suggested to China Real Time the sacrifice may have been worth it. “I’m glad they’re gone,” he said.

Elsewhere, though, the battle continues to rage on. In one residential complex in the central city of Wuhan, irritated apartment owners have been unable to deter local dancers despite hurling insults, threats and — in a moment of desperation – feces.

CAIRO – The Indonesian government has launched a new campaign to reduce noise from mosque amplifiers, promising to improve the sound quality of worshipping houses sound systems, the Jakarta Post reported on Sunday, January 27.

“Imagine if the preacher is Quraish Shihab, but [a bad sound system affected] the message. What a loss,” Jusuf Kalla, head of the Indonesian Mosque Council (DMI), said in his speech to launch the campaign, referring to a moderate Muslim scholar who is known for his pluralist interpretation of the Qur’an.

Kalla said that most of the mosques in the southeastern Asian country do not have decent amplification systems.

Launching the nationwide program, he dispatched 50 cars in which more than 150 technicians were ready to help mosque caretakers improve the sound quality of their amplifiers.

The new campaign was introduced after repeated complains about the country’s poor quality sound systems which resulted in noise pollution.

Indonesian mosques often use loudspeakers to raise Adhan as well as broadcasting Qur’an recitation and religious sermons.

The use of loudspeakers becomes further extensive in the holy fasting month of Ramadan, when Muslims dedicate their time to be closer to Allah through prayers, self-restraint and good deeds.

But the high sound carried by the speakers has triggered complaints from many residents, especially those living near mosques.

Earlier in 2013, Kalla announced that the DMI would initiate a countrywide sound system donation program.

Kalla has also proposed a ban on the amplification of mosque services.

The umbrella body said that mosques would be banned from using loudspeakers for religious sermons and Qur’an recitation, allowing them for raising Adhan only.

Bad Management

Kalla blasted the government for not doing enough to assist in the management of the country’s some 800,000 mosques, complaining about lack of funding.

“Mosques are the most important religious institution, but the government is preoccupied with hajj pilgrimage,” he said.

“In countries like Brunei [Darussalam] and Turkey, the government allocates money to mosques.”

He warned that by ignoring the mosques, the government was facing threats of radicalization spread.

“So if a mosque turns radical, the government [is to blame] because it does not pay enough attention,” Kalla said.

Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim state with Muslims making up around 85 percent of its 237-million population.

There are nearly 800,000 mosques in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Mosque loudspeakers have sparked debates in a number of Muslim countries over the noise caused by the amplifications, particularly during Ramadan.

In 2012, Saudi authorities banned small mosques from using loudspeakers to call for prayers during the fasting month.