“I have to plead to owners of memorial parks in our city to accommodate more space for the poor. Every week, we get an average of 30 requests for assistance from our poor families in the city,” said Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan.
The only cemetery for the poor located in Barangay Cutcut here is actually owned by the Catholic parish. Because it has fi lled up, Bishop Virgilio Pablo David, who has been recently assigned to the Diocese of Caloocan City, ordered it closed. The city government itself never had any public cemetery.
While private memorial parks have allocated some space for the poor, even these spaces are now filling up, Pamintuan noted.
Thus, he ordered a rush on the construction of the city’s fi rst cemetery in Barangay Sapa Libutad. Last Friday, he led in the groundbreaking ceremonies for the cemetery that could cost P110 million.
“Initially, the cemetery will occupy some 1.6 hectares, but we are now negotiating for another eight hectares just beside the area,” he noted.
Pamintuan cited studies indicating that similar cemeteries normally cost about P300 million.
“It will not be an ordinary public cemetery. It will also be a park with jogging paths. It will have a smokeless crematorium and three chapels,” he noted.
He also stressed that remains would not be buried in the ground in the cemetery. Instead, there will 8,000 apartment type tombs and niches.
Pamintuan said the cemetery’s columbarium would have 400 slots for the ash remains. “After some years, we expect the remains in the tombs to be moved to the crematorium so our cemetery will not fi ll up readily,” he added.
He noted that “the cost of cremation services at the new cemetery would be only about P7,000 which is much cheaper than the services in private sector.”
“We have established a dialysis center, a cardiac center, and expanded our city hospital for the living. But we also have to assist the dead, especially those who belong to poor families,” the mayor stressed.
The city’s first public cemetery is expected to be operational by this April. But since the dead can’t wait, Pamintuan has vowed to work things out with private memorial parks for additional space for the poor in the meantime.
