WESTERN BUREAU – The St James Parish Council has drastically increased its fees for the purchase of burial spots at the Pye River cemetery in Montego Bay in a move that the council said will make the facility financially viable.

“The council has an obligation to ensure that whatever facilities it operates are able to carry their weight financially, and so we want to make sure that we do not operate at a loss,” council chairman and mayor of Montego Bay, Noel Donaldson told the Observer.

The new fee structure came on stream on April 1 and sees the cost of securing an adult grave spot increased from $1,500 to $8,500, while the cost of a spot for an adult vault has jumped from $3,000 to $9,000. The local authority has also increased the fees for burial spots for children by more than one hundred per cent. A grave spot for a child now costs $4,500, up from $1,000. As for a child’s vault space, the cost is now $5,000, up from $2,000. The council, intent on increasing its revenue intake, has also increased the fee for burial spots at its more than 15 cemeteries in the rural parts of the parish. The cost of adult grave and vault spots now stand at $4,500 and $5,000 respectively, while the cost of grave and vault spots for children now stand at $2,500, and $3,000 respectively.

The council has in recent times allocated large sums of money to the improvement of cemeteries in the parish. The Pye River facility, for example, underwent a $250,000 face-lift that involved repairs to broken graves, erection of drains and the general beautification of the property last year.

Donaldson told the Observer that the council planned to carry out further improvement works on the parish cemeteries but stressed that this could not reach fruition without adequate funding. According to the mayor, the new fees, which constitute the first such increase in almost 20 years, were “still reasonable” and would allow for the further development and maintenance at the facilities.

Meanwhile, the parish council has still not found a longed for private sector partner to develop a new cemetery on lands at Retirement in the parish. Last November, the council placed several advertisements in local newspapers seeking private sector involvement in the venture, but there have been no takers. They are nonetheless pressing ahead with plans to get approval from the National Environmental and Planning Agency (NEPA). The agency had earlier raised concerns about the development of the new cemetery.

“NEPA has recommended ‘certain things’ and we are presently preparing designs which should be sent back to them within another month for approval,” Tubal Brown, the council’s superintendent of road and works, informed.