Chief executive officer of Belgrove's Funeral Home and Crematorium Keith Belgrove is calling on Local Government Minister Franklyn Khan for the enactment of the Funeral Homes Bill.
In remembering his fondest moment of his longtime friend, former prime minister Patrick Manning, Belgrove described Manning as a gallant soldier who got the Funeral Homes Bill's first reading in the Parliament of T&T in 1999.
Speaking with the T&T Guardian yesterday, Belgrove said that if the government then did not change, he strongly believes that T&T would have had funeral homes laws and regulations today, "under Manning's foresight."
"That was the biggest and fondest memory I have of Mr Manning," Belgrove said.
"And now I look forward for Mr Khan to give us an ear and attempt to get the licensing laws completed because we that professionalism and only laws and regulations will make it happen," he added.
T&T Guardian understands that once the Funeral Homes Bill, is enacted, all funeral homes and their respective employees will be registered/licensed. Funeral homes will no longer be allowed to practise price gouging, touting or other ills.
Under penalty of law, all deviant practitioners in the industry will be obligated by law to discard their decadent and disruptive behaviour.
Yesterday, during a visit to the grave site where Manning's body was laid to rest at the Orange Grove Memorial Gardens, groundsmen were seen carrying out finishing touches to the grave as they prepared to seal it off. The workers, however, refused to comment. Even residents declined to comment.
Belgrove, over the past week, was very busy heading a large team he had put together throughout the planning stage of Manning's State Funeral.
He proudly said yesterday: "We were under pressure but everything came together and yesterday (Saturday) at the private ceremony at the Memorial Gardens everything went extremely smoothly."
Belgrove sent kudos to the community for respecting Hazel's wish for privacy of the last committal rites.
"Kudos to the community for largely respecting Mrs Manning's wishes. There was a crowd but most quickly left, some of them were looking over the fence but they also left. They totally respected her wishes and this clearly is a statement of how they felt of the man. They respected him," Belgrove said.
Asked about the proceedings of the private ceremony at the Memorial Gardens, Belgrove did not disclose intimate information but would only say: "Because of Mrs Manning's request of utter privacy, I could only disclose general information."
Belgrove said the Eastern Chorale Choir was in attendance and about five tents decorated in the National colours–Red, White and Black.
"There was an appropriate send-off designed by Mrs Manning and the family, which I cannot discuss but Mr Manning is now crypted at the private cemetery," Belgrove said.
Asked how much was the cost of the funeral and/or plots there, Belgrove replied: "That I cannot say."
Yesterday, when contacted, Manning's son, Brian said "they are well."
In an exchange of messages with the T&T Guardian, Brian confirmed that his father was buried at the modern-day burial ground just after 5 pm on Saturday following the State funeral which was held at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-of-Spain.This followed the final procession from Caura Junction to Belgrove's Funeral Home
T&T Guardian was told by someone close to the Manning family that only immediate relatives attended the private burial ceremony. Red roses were handed out to Manning's bereaved wife, Hazel and other relatives minutes before the burial.
"This was very emotional as we all felt broken at this point after holding up so strongly throughout the week during all of the State's activities, including processions and the body lying in State both in San Fernando and Port-of-Spain," the close family friend said.
However, an "adopted" family member, a woman (whose name was withheld by the T&T Guardian) wrote on her Facebook wall yesterday morning describing her morning after as "so hard."She also expressed her disbelief that Manning, whom she shared a father-daughter relationship with, is now gone.
She wrote: "Thank you to my adopted family, the Manning's for allowing me to be part of the service and burial, words cannot express my gratitude. I am trying to allow it to bring closure for me although I still cannot believe he is gone. This morning is so hard. I'll never get that phone call first thing in the morning or in the night or randomly during the day. It's as though time has stood still. I'm blessed to have shared a father-daughter relationship with him and spoken to him and saw him in a different way too, the human, the father's touch. He was everyone's hero. He has two biological children but was a father to many. We must never forget, his legacy must live on."
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The $17 million Memorial Gardens is located on the compound of Belgrove's and was established in 2010.
Back then it was deemed as a new burial method, called a lawn crypt system, which is designed to maximise land use in the cemetery by stacking four caskets in an underground crypt. The design consists of a large, completely sealed, watertight concrete walled box structure extending 12 feet underground, with drainage pipes 15 feet down below, eight-inch reinforced concrete base pad, six-inch reinforced sidewalls and two-inch reinforced internal panels.
Once lowered into the grave, the coffin is covered with two inches of soil, before a four-inch, reinforced grass-covered concrete lid is used to seal the grave by a specially designed lifting machine.
CEO of Belgrove's Funeral home in a 2012 interview with the T&T Guardian said that the new method created a totally green cemetery, as it was completely sealed and encased in concrete preventing any harmful chemicals or effluence, such as embalming fluids like formaldehyde, heavy metals used in coffin and casket construction, and the decomposition of human remains from leaching into the soil and contaminating the ground water.