Unused sections of May Pen Cemetery likely to be privatised

BY KIMMO MATTHEWS Observer staff reporter matthewsk@jamaicaobserver.com

Friday, July 16, 2010

GOVERNMENT is considering privatising unused sections of the century-old May Pen Cemetery, which is costing the State millions of dollars each year to maintain.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, who made the disclosure during a tour of the cemetery yesterday, said the idea was one of several he was exploring as part of efforts to develop and restore the burial site — one of the oldest in the English-speaking Caribbean.

"Privately operated cemeteries have now become quite an established phenomenon in Jamaica and it is possible that we could accommodate that here as well," the prime minister said.

"For example, the idea to allocate certain unused sections of the cemetery to private operators, we can negotiate with them an appropriate partnership so that it would not be just a public cemetery," said Golding.

However, he said the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) would have to do a mapping of the cemetery before this could be done.

"What I have asked the Mayor Desmond McKenzie to do is to get the KSAC to really map out the cemetery, lay out what exists now to indicate what would need to be done in order to put it in the kind of shape that we would want," Golding said.

He said he would also explore the possibility of both public and private partnerships to move the project forward.

"...To see how we can bring various government agencies in a partnership to restore it to see what sort of private-public partnership could also help to transform the cemetery into what we feel is appropriate for the major burying space for Jamaican people," said Golding.

In the meantime, the prime minister also disclosed that plans were afoot for the Forestry Department to remove some of the trees at the cemetery, which he said were "undermining the integrity of the graves".

The KSAC, has in the past, embarked on several projects to clean the cemetery of overgrown vegetation. One of the projects involved the use of prisoners from several correctional institutions, which was scrapped because of security reasons.

Golding was accompanied by several KSAC officials, led by Mayor McKenzie, on yesterday's tour, which was organised after cemetery workers found several human bones during a clean-up of the burial site last week.

However, its yet to be determined whether the bones were dumped there or were from broken graves.

Earlier this week, the KSAC announced that only its engineers would now be allowed to build vaults at the cemetery, citing improper building practices by private contractors.

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Unused sections of May Pen Cemetery likely to be privatised