AMID the growing demand for the burial place in the eight public graveyards in Dhaka, a city of 16 million, City Corporation officials have stopped allocating permanent graves since 2008 and propose to increase the rent and service charge. In regular time, 300 people die in a day on average in Dhaka city, and most graves in the city are temporary because the city has run out of room for its dead. The crisis has left many others in the capital unable to secure a permanent resting place for relatives and friends. It’s not difficult to find space for burials – temporary plots, but under city rules every two years another body will be buried in each plot. So multiple bodies are buried in temporary graves – that’s how Dhaka manages. People find it difficult but most have no choice. Sometimes family members share the same grave.
From last week, Dhaka South City Corporation increased the registration fee for burial and graveyard rent. The new policy suggested Tk 1000 for service charge instead of existing Tk 200, Tk 500,000 for 10 years, 1,000,000 for 15 years, Tk 1,500,000 for 20 years and Tk 2,000,000 for 25 years preservation of graveyard. The reburial fee in the preserve graveyard was hiked to Tk 50,000 in the new policy from Tk 15,000. According to religious scholars in Bangladesh, Islam permits more than one body in the same grave.
The overwhelming preference of people is for their deceased loved ones to have their own graves which aren’t shared. But in Dhaka, that’s just not possible anymore, no matter what faith one holds. Dhaka’s biggest Catholic Church Holy Rosary informed that the burial crisis is also acute in the church. City officials struggling to find space are now encouraging people to bury their dead relatives in their ancestral villages – and are even planning to offer incentives for those who do. Several voluntary organizations offer free transportation services for the corpse. A private company has also come forward in building graveyard on 200 bighas, enough for 80,000 graves in Gazipur. The city residents should consider the crisis of graveyard, while the city authorities can come forward with new graveyard at a low cost.
