ILOILO City – Congestion in public cemeteries remains a concern. But for the past six years the ordinance addressing the problem had not been implemented. The previous city government reasoned out it had no money to build columbaria or small bone boxes in cemeteries.
Now, Mayor Jerry Treñas is vowing to end the bureaucratic inertia. He told Panay News he has started looking for funds not only for columbaria but also for a city government-run crematorium.
Treñas
is also scouting for a 1.5-hectare property for a new public cemetery with a
columbarium.
Regulation Ordinance No. 2013-238 author Councilor Ely Estante welcomed the
mayor’s move.
“Ang akon ordinansa madumduman lang
kon lapit na ang Pista Minatay, pero waay naton ini ginakalimtan,” Estante said.
He suggested making the congested Tanza Public Cemetery in Barangay
Timawa-Tanza 1, City Proper a pilot area for a columbarium “para mahatagan ta man sa maayo nga palahuwayan ang aton pigado nga
pumoluyo.”
“Lantawon ta kon pwede pa dira,” said Treñas,
noting that the cemetery is one of the most congested in the city.
The city government, through the City Environment and Natural Resources Office
(CENRO), is overseeing three public cemeteries – the Tanza Public Cemetery; the
one in Barangay Quintin Salas, Jaro district; and in Barangay Jereos, La Paz
district.
The Tanza Public Cemetery has over 10,000 tombs, according to CENRO chief Engineer Noel Hechanova. In August last year 18 tombs there collapsed. Incessant rains were blamed.
The tombs that collapsed were those that were stacked one over the other in layers. The collapse exposed 27 sets of human skeletons. Some tombs hosted more than one dead person.
It
was in 2011 when Estante first suggested that cremation services for the dead
be made available to ease the congestion in the cemeteries, then the ashes of
the dead would be placed in space-saving columbaria.
Two years later, in 2013, the Sangguniang Panlungsod passed Regulation
Ordinance 2013-238 “creating a city crematorium,
columbarium and multipurpose halls inside city cemeteries.”
The
Catholic Church also maintains cemeteries in the districts of Jaro, Mandurriao,
La Paz, City Proper, and Arevalo but these suffer from congestion, too.
There are spacious privately-managed cemeteries in the city – at least four
located mostly in Jaro and Mandurriao – but not all city residents can afford
to bury their dead in them./PN
