The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) has writ­ten to the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fu­ner­al Pro­fes­sion­als of Trinidad and To­ba­go ask­ing for the cost of us­ing cre­ma­to­ri­ums for the fu­ner­als of COVID-19 vic­tims.

In a let­ter sent yes­ter­day, the SDMS said it has been told the cost to use in­door cre­ma­to­ri­ums has risen dra­mat­i­cal­ly since the start of the pan­dem­ic when open pyre fu­ner­als for COVID-19 vic­tims were banned.

“It has come to our at­ten­tion that the cost of an in­door cre­ma­tion can range from about ten to fif­teen thou­sand dol­lars. Re­cent­ly, how­ev­er, some es­ti­mates have put this cost at be­tween $27,000 to $50,000 per corpse,” the SDMS said.

The SDMS has tak­en the Min­istry of Health to court seek­ing ju­di­cial re­view on the ban. That mat­ter will be heard in March be­fore Jus­tice Na­dia Kan­ga­loo.

In the in­ter­im, the or­gan­i­sa­tion said it wants to as­sist needy fam­i­lies who are strug­gling to bear the costs of cre­mat­ing their rel­a­tives as is cus­tom­ary in the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty.

“Un­til such a time when open pyre/ air cre­ma­tions are once again al­lowed, the Ma­ha Sab­ha feels it is nec­es­sary to iden­ti­fy ar­eas in which as­sis­tance or guid­ance can be ren­dered to those of its mem­bers who are most af­fect­ed by this pol­i­cy, es­pe­cial­ly those who may be opt­ing for a bur­ial in­stead of a cre­ma­tion.”

The SDMS al­so wants to make rep­re­sen­ta­tion to “cer­tain en­ti­ties” to as­sist those needy or vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies with fu­ner­al costs.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha is seek­ing the costs of in­cin­er­at­ing one corpse, the dai­ly cost of keep­ing one corpse, the av­er­age length of time a corpse must be kept be­fore an avail­able date for cre­ma­tion is set, the cal­cu­la­tion of the cost of in­cin­er­at­ing a body based on weight and the av­er­age wait­ing times be­fore fam­i­lies are giv­en the ash­es of their loved ones.

“This is im­por­tant as the Hin­du rit­u­als that are done with the ash­es usu­al­ly take place the day af­ter the cre­ma­tion,” the SDMS said.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha ac­knowl­edged that the As­so­ci­a­tion was un­der no oblig­a­tion to pro­vide those costs but asked for “hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we can safe­ly guess that, giv­en the on­go­ing rav­ages of this pan­dem­ic, the death rate is like­ly to es­ca­late along­side the oth­er dif­fi­cul­ties that arise from it.”