Dead locked out of cremation site over missing paperwork

A hiccup in the registration process for cremations was the reason given for the temporary closure of the Caroni cremation site.

It led to hundreds of mourners being locked out on Wednesday morning.

Newsday understands the mourners, along with staff from three funeral homes, went to the site for their relatives' last rites, but were met with locked gates. They were told the cremations were not scheduled and had to be postponed.

Municipal police were called and local government officials spoke with mourners and staff at the site to organise a reopening.

Newsday spoke to chairman of the Tunapuna/ Piarco Regional Corporation (TPRC) Kwasi Robinson, who said there were issues with funeral homes which had failed to register their cremations on Wednesday, leading to confusion over how many services were scheduled for that day.

He said from his information, only one cremation was scheduled, but eight others were not recorded, leading to the pile-up.

He said the situation was unfortunate, but it was the responsibility of the funeral homes to go through the necessary channels and to obey the public health regulations.

"If we don't have the documents registered, there is no reason for us to open the gates.

"The funeral homes know the proper procedure, but people want to do the wrong thing. Once the funeral home has the certification from the police authorising them to conduct the cremation, they go ahead without registering with the corporation – and that's not how it works.

"We have to have a record of who is being cremated there."

On rumours of an unofficial arrangement for cremations between one funeral home and a staff member at the cremation site, Robinson said he had taken note of the claims and an investigation was under way.

Robinson also said the cremation site was eventually reopened and most cremations were completed by the time he left the site just after 1 pm, under police supervision, to ensure public health regulations were observed.

He also said the corporation did its best to be accommodating and sensitive to the religious persuasions of all citizens.

"We in the regional corporation have a very open stakeholder-management policy, and the people who felt most disenfranchised would have been the relatives of the deceased. So I did my best to apologise to all of the families, because this was not their fault.

"However, we also have to put our foot down. We can't have seven cremations being done at the same time. The same thing we don't want at our beaches and playgrounds, we can't have it at a cremation site."

Newsday also spoke to Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Kazim Hosein, who also visited the site and agreed the responsibility fell on funeral homes to ensure cremations were registered with the corporation.

"The problem was eventually rectified. The responsibility was really on the funeral homes to register the cremations with the regional corporation. But I spoke with members of the Hindu community and worked with them."

But Roland Boodoo managing director of Boodoo's Funeral Home, contended that he did have the necessary documents for cremation, and did not understand the reason for the lockout.

"We had our permit from the police CID office, the receipt, our death certificate, and we paid our $300 cremation fee. So how are they saying they didn't know anything about it?

"This incident really took us by surprise. We didn't get a memo or anything like that. We were just told that we had to cancel some of our cremations.

"But my driver was already on his way there when I got that phone call."

On the issue of large gatherings at the cremation site, Boodoo said while he had a responsibility to remind his clients of the public health regulations, he did not have any control over how many relatives chose to show up at a funeral.

"We are telling the people (families) only five people are allowed at the site, but there's a big car park there and we see it every day where relatives stay there.

"My hearse driver cannot tell the relatives they can't be there. That's why there are police. We can only forewarn our clients that only so much people are allowed."

Speaking with Newsday, mourner Prem Ramjit said the cremation of his relative was completed.

He also said the number of relatives and others who attended the funeral was well over the stipulated limit of five people.

"In a Hindu cremation there are usually five people taking part, but there was also our pundit, the driver and other mourners, so there were about 30 people in total for our funeral.

"I didn't understand the hold-up because the cremation site is so big they could have allowed people to enter and accommodate everyone. The area is so big they could have kept a party in there if they wanted to."