ILOILO City – Are the tomb raiders at it again?
Information reached City Administrator Hernando Galvez that some unscrupulous individuals were illegally selling tombs at the city’s pubic cemetery in Barangay Tanza-Timawa Zone II, City Proper.
“They are selling niches at P35,000 each,” said Galvez.
He ordered the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) – the city government office overseeing public cemeteries – to verify the information.
Two years ago, a similar modus operandi alarmed the CENRO. Office chief Engr. Noel Hechanova said devious individuals would pry open tombs, remove the skeletal remains and offer the space to families looking for vacant tombs where to bury their departed love ones.
Tanza cemetery is already crowded. It has over 10,000 tombs, according to Hechanova.
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 the city government encourage cremation to ease the overcrowding in cemeteries, then the ashes of the dead would be placed in space-saving columbaria.
A columbarium is a storage facility of cinerary urns (urns holding a deceased’s cremated remains).
In 2013 the Sangguniang Panlungsod approved Estante’s Regulation Ordinance 2013-231 “creating a city crematorium, columbarium and multipurpose halls inside city cemeteries.”/PN
