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[av_heading heading=’Cemetery congestion confronts city mayor ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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ILOILO City – Under the administration of Mayor Jose Espinosa III, will this city finally have a columbarium to decongest the city’s crowded public cemeteries?
A columbarium is a storage facility of cinerary urns (urns holding a deceased’s cremated remains). The term comes from the Latin word columba (dove) and originally referred to small compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons.
After the inconvenience he experienced on Nov. 1 during a visit to the tomb of his father at the city’s public cemetery in Barangay Tanza, Espinosa said he was considering putting up a columbarium – but in a new location and not inside the city’s congested public cemeteries.
A columbarium is considered a practical solution to the congestion.
The city government has long planned to decongest public cemeteries by introducing small bone boxes but nothing concrete has been done.
In 2011, Councilor Ely Estante suggested that cremation services for the dead be made available to ease the overcrowding in cemeteries, then the ashes of the dead would be placed in space-saving columbaria.
In 2013, the Sangguniang Panlungsod passed Regulation Ordinance 2013-238 “creating a city crematorium, columbarium and multipurpose halls inside city cemeteries.”
However, nothing concrete came out of it.
The districts of Jaro, Mandurriao, La Paz, City Proper, and Arevalo have cemeteries either maintained by the city government or the Catholic Church.
Iloilo City, however, is not lacking in privately-managed cemeteries. It has at least four located mostly in Jaro and Mandurriao. But not all city residents can afford to bury their dead in them.
Espinosa vowed to improve the city’s public cemeteries. One thing he wanted done immediately was elevating cemetery foot walks.
On Wednesday, the mayor had to negotiate his way through flooded foot walks at the Tanza cemetery to get to his father’s grave./PN
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