Run­ning out of bur­ial space is be­com­ing a grave prob­lem for some of the coun­try’s 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

At least six re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions San Juan/ Laven­ti­ile, Pe­nal/Debe, San­gre Grande, Princes Town, Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co and Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro are short of bur­ial plots at some of the ceme­ter­ies un­der their con­trol, forc­ing them to ap­proach the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands Paula Drakes for new bur­ial sites or ad­di­tion­al land to bury the dead.

Oth­ers are seek­ing ad­vice from their le­gal team, the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD) and its en­gi­neers.

The short­age of bur­ial plots is be­ing at­trib­uted to the 4,000 plus COVID-19-re­lat­ed deaths dur­ing the pan­dem­ic as well as the climb­ing mur­der rate, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials. 

Be­tween 2019 to 2023 the coun­try record­ed 2,562 mur­ders.

For this year, the mur­der rate has reached over 175.

Road traf­fic deaths and peo­ple who died of health com­pli­ca­tions and nat­ur­al caus­es would al­so in­crease the bur­ial fig­ures.

The lat­est da­ta on the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice web­site showed 9,435 deaths were record­ed in 2011.

The space in ceme­ter­ies ac­cord­ing to San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SJL­RC) chair­man Richard Wal­cott is dire as on­ly two of its four ceme­ter­ies- La Fil­lette and San Juan have been op­er­a­tional. The two oth­er sites- Moun­tain View and St Ann’s have been closed for more than a decade.

Of the 901 bur­ial plots at the San Juan Ceme­tery, Wal­cott said, 98 per cent have been filled.

He said the plan is to close this ceme­tery.

In the com­ing days, Wal­cott said the cor­po­ra­tion’s health of­fi­cers would seek the coun­cil’s ap­proval to shut the gate of this bur­ial ground which is more than a cen­tu­ry old.

“We have to go by their ad­vice. That pro­pos­al will be com­ing to the coun­cil short­ly. The coun­cil will have to de­cide on that. If the ceme­tery is over­pop­u­lat­ed then we have to close it. There is no two ways about it,” he said.

The La Fil­lette Ceme­tery along the North Coast is 65 per cent filled.

Sec­tion 11 of the Bur­ial Grounds Act states that a grave can on­ly be re­opened with­in sev­en years af­ter the bur­ial of a per­son.

One op­tion the cor­po­ra­tion has looked at, Wal­cott said, was to re­open Moun­tain View and St Ann’s bur­ial sites.

Moun­tain View was closed to the pub­lic due to land slip­page.

“When the rains fell in Moun­tain View you would have seen the coffins. Hope­ful­ly, the land is steady now so that we can re­open.”

The chair­man is await­ing a sta­tus re­port from its en­gi­neers to make its next move.

He could not say how much it would cost tax­pay­ers to op­er­a­tionalise this bur­ial site.

Ten years ago the cor­po­ra­tion closed the St Ann’s Ceme­tery af­ter 98 per cent of plots were filled. 

“We would have to see if we can re­sume buri­als there. We are await­ing a re­port from our health team to find out if it can be done,” he said.

Last Oc­to­ber, Wal­cott and a team of cor­po­ra­tion tech­nocrats met with Drakes and re­quest­ed lands for a new San Juan Ceme­tery.

He said sourc­ing land in this area was dif­fi­cult.

“The Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands has ap­point­ed one of her agents who is work­ing close­ly with the cor­po­ra­tion to find that nec­es­sary land for the ceme­tery. The cor­po­ra­tion made pro­pos­als and sug­ges­tions of po­ten­tial sites and they are present­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice with reg­u­lar feed­back giv­en to the chair­man’s of­fice,” he said.

Wal­cott said the cor­po­ra­tion re­mains hope­ful. He al­so hopes to con­struct a cre­ma­to­ri­um.

It costs the cor­po­ra­tion a pret­ty pen­ny an­nu­al­ly to main­tain four ceme­ter­ies.

“We spend some­thing like over $200,000 in main­tain­ing ceme­ter­ies per year. If we close the San Juan Ceme­tery it would cost us more be­cause we would have to en­sure it’s prop­er­ly se­cured and main­tained. Peo­ple have their loved ones there and you don’t want any­one to des­e­crate the graves,” Wal­cott said.

A mat­ter to dis­cuss

Of the 22 pub­lic ceme­ter­ies the San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SGRC) man­ages in the north­east­ern re­gion, coun­cil­lor Calvin Seecha­ran said Tu­rure and La Sei­va Ceme­ter­ies have space con­straints.

“They are al­most full,” said Seecha­ran who is chair­man for recre­ation­al grounds and open spaces at the SGRC.

 From Jan­u­ary 2019 to March 2024, Seecha­ran said Tu­rure lo­cat­ed at Damarie Hill, Guaico, has record­ed 860 buri­als.

The av­er­age num­ber of buri­als at Tu­rure is 16 per month.

This ceme­tery has 1220 bur­ial plots.

For this same pe­ri­od, he said, a to­tal of 429 peo­ple were buried at  La Sei­va lo­cat­ed at Fos­ter Road.

The month­ly buri­als at La Sei­va were record­ed at six.

 A list­ing showed ten oth­er ceme­ter­ies un­der the cor­po­ra­tion’s con­trol had col­lec­tive­ly buried 209 bod­ies from March 2020 to De­cem­ber 2021.

Chair­man of the SGRC Ken­wyn Phillip said the is­sue of ceme­ter­ies run­ning out of space was brought to the coun­cil’s at­ten­tion re­cent­ly.

“We will raise again it at our next statu­to­ry meet­ing.”

He said there are no lands avail­able to ex­tend these ceme­ter­ies.

Tu­rure cov­ers a land space of 10,675 square me­tres.

This ceme­tery sits next to a school and has a sprawl­ing squat­ting site be­hind it.

La Sei­va is sit­u­at­ed on 17,791 square me­tres of land at Fos­ter Road.

As to their next move, Phillip said, they would have to seek the ad­vice of SGRC en­gi­neers and tech­nocrats.

One so­lu­tion is to source State land with­in prox­im­i­ty of these ceme­ter­ies.

“There are oth­er ceme­ter­ies with lands around it that we might ask for,” Phillip said.

In the in­ter­im, Phillip said, the fam­i­lies of the de­ceased would have to bury their loved ones in oth­er ceme­ter­ies they man­age.

More ceme­ter­ies to close

Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) Josi­ah Austin al­so ad­mit­ted that bur­ial spots are grow­ing scarce in his cor­po­ra­tion, giv­en the large per­cent­age of burgess­es they had to ser­vice.

He said the St Joseph Ceme­tery is 100 per cent filled while Crown Street Ceme­tery in Tacarigua has reached 80 per cent with buri­als.

The cor­po­ra­tion’s ceme­ter­ies in Cara­po, Tu­na­puna and In­dus­try in D’Abadie are at 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

Lopinot, Sur­rey and El Chor­ro in Macaras St Joseph are at 40 per cent each.

Wash­ing­ton in Ca­roni was put at 30 per cent.

Austin said the cor­po­ra­tion had seen an in­flux of buri­als over the last three years- es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic.

The cor­po­ra­tion deals with six buri­als dai­ly.

An­nu­al­ly they han­dle around 1,518.

“As the largest cor­po­ra­tion by pop­u­la­tion, we must ac­knowl­edge there will be a sig­nif­i­cant amount of re­quests for space.

“As such we have iden­ti­fied suit­able spaces in the re­gion and our le­gal de­part­ment is li­ais­ing with the rel­e­vant agen­cies in an at­tempt to make that hap­pen,” Austin said.

Man­ag­ing 31 ceme­ter­ies is no easy feat for, chair­man of the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ryan Ram­per­sad.

Of this fig­ure, Ram­per­sad said they had to shut down the Clax­ton Bay Ceme­tery “af­ter it reached its full ca­pac­i­ty.”

He list­ed Caratal, Chan­der­nagore, Eck­el Vil­lage, For­res Park and Pi­paro Ceme­ter­ies as be­ing “close to full ca­pac­i­ty.”

Ram­per­sad said the year­ly cost to main­tain each ceme­tery is rough­ly $113,000.

Chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gow­tam Ma­haraj said space at two of his 17 ceme­ter­ies has been dwin­dling. 

On Thurs­day, Ma­haraj met with of­fi­cials of the TCPD to dis­cuss the Batchyia and Bar­rack­pore Ceme­ter­ies “that are near­ing ca­pac­i­ty.”

He said the sec­tion where Mus­lims are buried at the Bar­rack­pore Ceme­tery is filled.

“The Mus­lims got a lit­tle cor­ner of the ceme­tery....that spac­ing needs to be ex­pand­ed. It’s just too small.”

Ma­haraj said he need­ed per­mis­sion to utilise ad­di­tion­al land space at this bur­ial ground.

He said he first need­ed to hold dis­cus­sions.

“I want to ap­ply for the full acreage...what­ev­er the re­serve land is. This will re­quire sur­veys.”

The Batchyia Ceme­tery, Ma­haraj said, is lo­cat­ed in the town cen­tre of Pe­nal.

“So the us­age there is high­er than in the rur­al ar­eas. What we have no­ticed is this ceme­tery is max­ing out now.”

Ma­haraj said peo­ple pre­fer these two ceme­ter­ies based on tra­di­tion.

“This is where their loved ones would have been buried. These ceme­ter­ies are tied to fam­i­lies, feel­ings and his­to­ry.”

He said these ceme­ter­ies are al­so easy to ac­cess.

Asked if the climb in mur­ders has been putting a strain on the bur­ial plots, Ma­haraj said he did not see any cor­re­la­tion in the Pe­nal/Debe dis­tricts.

Dur­ing a brief in­ter­view, Princes Town Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gowrie Roop­nar­ine said sev­en of the cor­po­ra­tion’s ceme­ter­ies have been al­most maxed out but did not pin­point their lo­ca­tions.

“We are li­ais­ing with the Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands at this time.”

Re­gard­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Ma­yaro/Rio Claro and Port-of-Spain, there was no re­sponse from chair­man Ray­mond Co­zi­er and May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne re­spec­tive­ly.

Chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er opt­ed not to speak.

Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do May­ors Faaiq Mo­hammed and Robert Par­ris said grave­yard space was not an is­sue in their mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties. 

Ef­forts to reach Point Fortin May­or Clyde James were fu­tile.

The Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion said it has no con­trol of the three ceme­ter­ies in the area.

Cre­ma­tions the an­swer

Head of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als of T&T Kei­th Bel­grove said many ceme­ter­ies across the coun­try have been filled to ca­pac­i­ty for a very long time.

With­in a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, he said, spaces at ceme­ter­ies would be­come few­er.

Bel­grove said it was high time the Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished a na­tion­al ceme­tery on 50 acres of land where peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths and back­grounds would be buried.

“We could do the foot­work with the Gov­ern­ment on that. That is very pos­si­ble and very doable.”

But he said cre­ma­tions were an an­swer to the bur­ial space prob­lem.

“This coun­try has a cre­ma­tion rate of 60 per cent which is done through mod­ern and tra­di­tion­al meth­ods.”

Bel­grove said the price of a bur­ial and cre­ma­tion were al­most the same av­er­ag­ing at “$20,000.”