While the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en the green light for the re­sump­tion of open-air pyre cre­ma­tions for COVID-19 vic­tims, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) still main­tains that it pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger.

In a let­ter to the at­tor­neys of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SD­MA) on Fri­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed the pro­pos­als they dis­cussed dur­ing his meet­ing with Dhar­ma­charya Pun­dit Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram of the SDMS and with le­gal ad­vis­er Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly.

How­ev­er, the AG not­ed that the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr Roshan Paras­ram, main­tains that there is sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger in per­mit­ting open-air cre­ma­tions for the COVID-19 de­ceased. "The Gov­ern­ment took the ini­tia­tive to en­ter in­to dis­cus­sions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the SDMS so as to clar­i­fy that the hold­ing of open-air cre­ma­tions for COVID-19 vic­tims was a mat­ter for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice or a po­lice of­fi­cer above the rank of in­spec­tor. The Gov­ern­ment does not and has not op­posed the hold­ing of open-air cre­ma­tions."

To en­sure that the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is re­mind­ed of this, he said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will im­me­di­ate­ly in­form the TTPS "that as al­ways it is free to con­sid­er and to grant per­mits so as to fa­cil­i­tate the hold­ing of open-air cre­ma­tions." The AG was re­spond­ing to a let­ter sent through the SD­MA's at­tor­ney Ste­fan Ramkissoon con­tain­ing the draft frame­work for the re­sump­tion of open-air cre­ma­tions for COVID-19 de­ceased.

The pro­pos­als in­clud­ed that the bod­ies be pre­pared and han­dled by fu­ner­al agen­cies ac­cord­ing to the pro­to­cols and reg­u­la­tions which gov­ern them in this re­gard. Al­so, corpses will not be tak­en to pri­vate dwellings and homes but on­ly di­rect­ly to cre­ma­tion sites. The peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in the per­for­mance of rites will wear gloves and masks and no more than 25 peo­ple are to be al­lowed on the cre­ma­tion site, in­clu­sive of the pan­dits and peo­ple di­rect­ly in­volved in the rites. The cre­ma­tion cer­e­mo­ny will not ex­ceed 75 min­utes and peo­ple will be asked to leave im­me­di­ate­ly up­on com­ple­tion.

No more than sev­en peo­ple will be in at­ten­dance for the col­lec­tion of the ash­es and bone frag­ments, they must wear masks and gloves and this rit­u­al will not take longer than 30 min­utes. Con­tact­ed about com­plaints that UNC con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions were still not ap­prov­ing open-air cre­ma­tions, Ram­bal­ly said his in­for­ma­tion was that the cre­ma­tions were be­ing al­lowed by all cor­po­ra­tions.