Philippine needs more crematoriums

MANILA, Philippines – An administration lawmaker is calling for the establishment of more crematorium facilities all over the country, preferably one in each district, where poor Filipinos can bury their loved ones for a much lower cost if not for free.

Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe filed House Bill 135, or the proposed “Accessible Crematories Act,” to address the high cost of traditional burial.

“The cost of dying is getting prohibitive and getting competitive with the cost of living,” Batocabe’s bill read, adding that the establishment of more crematorium facilities would enable the “marginalized sector and the indigents to avail of the crematorium services for free.”

Batocabe also wants the crematorium facilities to be operationalized in a “socialized fee structure.”

He noted that the cremation of bodies would significantly reduce the payments made by families of the deceased, as opposed to traditional burial.

On the average, every Filipino family spends about P100,000 in traditional burial, about P70,000 for a memorial lot and P25,000 for interment.

“What we need is an alternative and more cost-efficient solution for the families who do not have enough money to pay for traditional means of burying their deceased family members,” Batocabe said.

Citing data from the World Factbook of the US CIA, Batocabe said there are 6.1 deaths per 1,000 population per year in the Philippines.

“If we multiply this to our current population estimates, that’s around 610,000 deaths per year. This number of deaths naturally would require a large area of land amounting to about 1,488-square kilometers to accommodate the burial of the bodies,” he said, noting that there are now more than 100 million Filipinos.