ANGELES CITY– One hundred eighty three years since this city was founded by the Spaniards as a municipality, it will finally have its first public cemetery largely for the poor.
This, even as Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan said his administration now wants implemented a local law passed 44 years ago requiring local memorial parks to allocate at least five percent of their areas as cemeteries for indigents.
Pamintuan said he is in final negotiations for the allocation of this city’s first public cemetery covering at least two hectares in Barangay Sapa Libutad. He said the cemetery would have a crematorium and a chapel.
Local poor folk have long regarded an already congested Catholic cemetery in Barangay Cutcut, under the control of the Holy Rosary parish, as their “public cemetery” where indigent families buried their dead at least cost.
Pamintuan said that pending the completion of the first public cemetery and compliance with the 44-year old law on memorial park accommodation for indigents, Auxiliary Bishop Virgilio Pablo David, parish priest of Holy Rosary, agreed to delay the closure of the Catholic cemetery.
The public cemetery that Pamintuan wants to be rushed here would be the first since Angeles was established by the Spaniards as a municipality called Pueblo de los Angeles in 1829.
Meanwhile, city administrator Dennis Albert Pamintuan said the city government is signing an agreement with the La Pieta Memorial Park and Holy Mary Memorial Park for the designation of areas for indigent cemeteries.
He recalled that in 1968, the city council passed the “Private Memorial Park Type Cemetery Ordinance,” providing the allocation of five percent of the areas of memorial parks for development by the city government for “charity burial” for the poor.
Qualified beneficiaries are those who passed away after having been resident of Angeles for at least two years.
“Charity burial shall be deemed as interment free of charge for the burial lot. The area so designated shall immediately be developed and should be open for operation not later than six months from the date of approval of the application,” the ordinance said.
The ordinance was approved under the helm of then Mayor Eugenio Suarez and Vice Mayor Alberto Pamintuan, father of the current mayor.
