An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form is ex­pect­ed to bring im­proved man­age­ment across all re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions and ac­cord­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, the new struc­ture will en­able greater ac­count­abil­i­ty and en­sure burgess­es get their tax­es worth, in­clud­ing from the fu­ner­al in­dus­try.

Promis­ing this as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions dur­ing Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter at the La Joya Com­plex, St Joseph, Row­ley spoke of the chal­lenges they cur­rent­ly face.

“One of the ob­sta­cles we have now in the cur­rent arrange­ment is that di­choto­my in man­age­ment be­tween pub­lic ser­vice man­age­ment and po­lit­i­cal ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment, which is not clear be­cause of the way lo­cal gov­ern­ment evolved from the war­den days to the coun­ty coun­cil days and so on,” he said.

Asked how LGR would as­sist in ex­pand­ing and im­prov­ing bur­ial and cre­ma­tion ser­vices with­in each cor­po­ra­tion, Row­ley ac­knowl­edged that in the cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, “space to bury the dead is at a pre­mi­um.”

In fact, he said there is a like­ly pos­si­bil­i­ty that new ceme­ter­ies may need to be built and bet­ter care of such fa­cil­i­ties will be need­ed.

Ex­press­ing an­noy­ance when­ev­er he sees an un­tidy ceme­tery, Row­ley said, “Peo­ple who can’t take care of the dead with rev­er­ence are not do­ing what they should, and I hate to pass the ceme­tery and see it over­grown.”

Claim­ing this neg­li­gence un­der­scored how the cur­rent man­age­ment was falling down on the job, he con­tin­ued, “I know there are peo­ple on the pay­roll who has the job to clean those ceme­ter­ies but be­cause of the poor man­age­ment that ex­ists in the cor­po­ra­tion, some of these peo­ple are not do­ing their jobs. Man­age­ment is falling down on the job and the ceme­ter­ies that we have are not prop­er­ly main­tained, es­pe­cial­ly the ones in the non-ur­ban ar­eas. Even in the ur­ban ar­eas, we have that dif­fi­cul­ty.”

Dis­cus­sions to es­tab­lish new ceme­ter­ies will in­clude con­sul­ta­tions with all stake­hold­ers he as­sured.

Re­gard­ing cre­ma­to­ri­ums, Row­ley said, “One of the things I am con­sid­er­ing now, by re­quest from the fu­ner­al di­rec­tors, is leg­is­la­tion to gov­ern the whole man­age­ment of the fu­ner­al in­dus­try.”

In­di­cat­ing this was on the books for 2024, he ex­plained, “We should do some­thing about that be­cause there are some as­pects to it which are not cur­rent­ly cov­ered by ef­fec­tive leg­is­la­tion, and we need to do that to im­prove the ser­vices re­quired.”

Pres­i­dent of the Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als As­so­ci­a­tion, Kei­th Bel­grove, was heart­ened by the PM’s as­sur­ance re­gard­ing the high­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed in­dus­try.

Found­ed in 1972, the as­so­ci­a­tion would have gone through sev­er­al in­car­na­tions but re­mained stead­fast in its de­sire to have li­cens­ing laws brought in­to ef­fect to reg­u­late what Bel­grove de­scribed as, “a to­tal­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed, and some­times most undis­ci­plined in­dus­try.”

Re­fer­ring to the fu­ner­al agency touts that troll the hos­pi­tals and morgues, even go­ing so far as to leave call cards on the bed­side ta­bles in the wards, Bel­grove said this was dis­tress­ing to vic­tims and their fam­i­lies.

He said al­though there is a code of con­duct and prac­tice for the in­dus­try, peo­ple just ig­nore it.

Of the 80-plus fu­ner­al agen­cies cur­rent­ly in op­er­a­tion, he said on­ly about three or four of them ad­here to those stan­dards.

“It is now des­per­ate that we must have reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing it, so we have pe­ti­tioned this Gov­ern­ment...we have pe­ti­tioned every gov­ern­ment since 1970...each gov­ern­ment saw the need for it but no gov­ern­ment at the time gave it pri­or­i­ty on the leg­isla­tive sched­ule,” Bel­grove said.

Bel­grove al­so called for a meet­ing with Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to dis­cuss the many wrong things that cur­rent­ly oc­cur with fu­ner­al agency per­son­nel sup­port­ing the po­lice in re­mov­ing de­ceased per­sons from res­i­dences and pub­lic places.

Asked to ad­dress the de­mand for bur­ial spaces now giv­en the cur­rent land­scape, Bel­grove again rec­om­mend­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of a 30-acre na­tion­al ceme­tery in the North Cen­tral re­gion, which he said would ad­e­quate­ly serve the needs of the pop­u­la­tion.

On the ques­tion of phys­i­cal up­keep of ceme­ter­ies, he agreed with Row­ley that, “you could be in a fu­ner­al now but the bush­es so tall now, that no­body know you in­side there.”