For the past two weeks, fu­ner­als in To­ba­go have been de­layed and in many cas­es halt­ed as dead bod­ies have been pil­ing up at fu­ner­al homes. In fact, the sit­u­a­tion is be­com­ing so dire that peo­ple are leav­ing their de­ceased loved ones at the hos­pi­tal’s mor­tu­ary in a bid to avoid pay­ing stor­age fees to fu­ner­al homes. It all stems from the un­re­solved is­sue in­volv­ing the shut­down of op­er­a­tions at the Of­fice of Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment in To­ba­go, which has been pre­vent­ing peo­ple on the is­land from ac­cess­ing death cer­tifi­cates which are crit­i­cal to ar­rang­ing fu­ner­als and bury­ing the dead.

On Fri­day, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­vealed the is­land’s Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al of­fi­cials have been un­able to ac­cess the sys­tem and so the pro­cess­ing of civ­il—death and birth cer­tifi­cates—land and com­pa­ny doc­u­ments have halt­ed.

As a re­sult, rel­a­tives of the de­ceased and of­fi­cials from To­ba­go’s fu­ner­al homes are among those feel­ing the pres­sure.

An­oth­er of­fi­cial at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, who did not wish to be named, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the sit­u­a­tion is be­com­ing so bad that rel­a­tives have re­sort­ed to leav­ing bod­ies at the mor­tu­ary to avoid pay­ing ex­or­bi­tant re­frig­er­a­tion and stor­age fees at fu­ner­al homes. This buys them time to go to Trinidad and or­gan­ise death cer­tifi­cates through the Port-of-Spain Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al De­part­ment.

How­ev­er, the of­fi­cial said the hos­pi­tal is pre­pared for any over­crowd­ing and will use a con­tain­er bought dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic to store bod­ies in the event To­ba­go’s mor­tu­ary runs out of space.

Over the week­end, fu­ner­al home own­ers said cus­tomers have not been able to prop­er­ly plan fu­ner­al arrange­ments be­cause of the un­cer­tain­ty of trav­el­ling to Trinidad to ob­tain death cer­tifi­cates and re­turn to To­ba­go.

Own­er of Andy’s Cas­kets and Fu­ner­al Home, Andy Williams, said some of his clients are grow­ing frus­trat­ed with the process.

“We had one fam­i­ly that told me they had to go to Trinidad to get death cer­tifi­cates to bring back to us. It is af­fect­ing us.

“We have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this prob­lem for about two weeks. It’s about four dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies that I have heard com­plain that they couldn’t or­gan­ise the bur­ial be­cause of this prob­lem. Re­mem­ber, I’m not the on­ly fu­ner­al home on the is­land, so I am speak­ing from my ex­pe­ri­ence.

“One of the four fam­i­lies ex­pe­ri­enc­ing this prob­lem man­aged to pro­ceed with the bur­ial. And it’s not at my fu­ner­al home, there are is­sues at the mor­tu­ary,” Williams said.

Shirelle Clarke, own­er of Cas­ket Em­po­ri­um, spoke about the chal­lenges and im­pli­ca­tions the im­passe will have on the is­land’s fu­ner­al in­dus­try.

“Just to­day, we had cus­tomers come in who had to re­ly on a fam­i­ly mem­ber from Trinidad to go and get the death cer­tifi­cate and send it back to To­ba­go. This has posed many chal­lenges for my cus­tomers, es­pe­cial­ly those who re­side in this part of To­ba­go.

“We recog­nised this is­sue about a week and a half ago. The dates that peo­ple had want­ed to have their fu­ner­als can­not hap­pen be­cause, of course, you can’t have a fu­ner­al un­less the death is reg­is­tered and the death cer­tifi­cate is ob­tained,” Clarke ex­plained.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Union Fu­ner­al Home said cus­tomers have ex­pe­ri­enced a de­lay in bur­ial since they have to take ad­di­tion­al time to ob­tain the death cer­tifi­cate be­fore they can ap­proach the bank for fund­ing the bur­ial.

“The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions on­ly work with the elec­tron­ic ver­sion. If they need to have a cre­ma­tion, it would al­so be af­fect­ed,” the rep­re­sen­ta­tive said.

Kei­th Bel­grove, Head of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als of T&T and own­er of Bel­groves Group of Com­pa­nies, said that while the im­passe has not af­fect­ed his To­ba­go fu­ner­al home, he is will­ing to ex­tend help to oth­er fu­ner­al homes so that their cus­tomers can avoid tak­ing the boat or the plane to Trinidad to ac­quire death cer­tifi­cates.

“Be­cause of our net­work, our clients wouldn’t have to come to Trinidad. We would as­sist any fu­ner­al home in To­ba­go with this as well. We will have the pa­pers trans­ferred to Trinidad, and we would ob­tain them here.

“But our clients don’t ex­pe­ri­ence dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause we are na­tion­wide, and that is help­ful. How­ev­er, it is still a sig­nif­i­cant in­con­ve­nience be­cause any­thing like death and birth cer­tifi­cates, and any­thing else that re­quires them, would be de­layed,” Bel­grove said.

Far­ley fu­ri­ous; PM says

it’s a com­plex is­sue

The mat­ter has al­so left Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine con­cerned about the con­se­quences for the reg­is­tra­tion of deaths and births if To­ba­go does not re­gain ac­cess to the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al ser­vices this week.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day evening, Au­gus­tine asked, “Is the Gov­ern­ment aware that buri­als can­not hap­pen? Births can­not be reg­is­tered? Land sales have halt­ed as deeds can­not be reg­is­tered? There is a cost to this.”

He added, “I am cer­tain that there is noth­ing stop­ping them from legal­ly grant­i­ng cre­den­tials to of­fi­cers in To­ba­go to get the sys­tem mov­ing un­til it is re­solved. I am wait­ing for the out­comes.”

Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the is­sues sur­round­ing the dis­rup­tion in the ser­vices at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s To­ba­go of­fice may be more com­plex than it ac­tu­al­ly ap­pears.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day evening, Row­ley said it is an “emer­gent is­sue” which may be more com­plex than some may see and that the so­lu­tion is re­al­ly a com­pli­cat­ed le­gal fix.

He added that this is why he was hes­i­tant to give a date as to when ex­act­ly the is­sues would be re­solved when asked if the is­land could ex­pect ser­vices at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s of­fice to re­sume ear­ly this week.

He said he did not want to make a pro­nounce­ment be­fore the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s of­fice had a chance to ad­vise him first.

Last Fri­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour, SC, said there ap­peared to be some “le­gal is­sues of some vin­tage to be re­solved” be­tween the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al and the Of­fice of Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s De­part­ment in To­ba­go, which had led to the present im­passe.

The AG said then that he re­quest­ed an ur­gent le­gal opin­ion from Michael Quam­i­na SC re­gard­ing the re­la­tion­ship and lines of au­thor­i­ty be­tween the two of­fices.

“I re­ceived doc­u­ments per­ti­nent to that co-re­la­tion­ship last on Tues­day, Oc­to­ber 10, 2023, and caused these to be de­liv­ered to Coun­sel. I have to­day re­it­er­at­ed to Lead­ing Coun­sel the ur­gent need for his ad­vice which I am as­sured that I will re­ceive im­mi­nent­ly, in or­der to en­able me to ad­vise the Cab­i­net and, in the in­ter­est of an ex­pe­di­tious res­o­lu­tion of this un­for­tu­nate im­passe,” he said.