MINISTER of Local Government Desmond McKenzie says he will be meeting with local mayors “very shortly” to discuss the issue of the increasing lack of burial space.

“I do know that there is a chronic problem right across the country, as it relates to finding burial space. We are aware of it and we are moving to address it,” the minister said.

He said that he was not aware of the proposal reportedly made by the Mayor of Falmouth Colin Gager, for relatives of people buried in the public cemeteries to assist in the maintenance of their burial plots, which was reported in yesterday’s edition of the Observer West.

He said, however, that he would be holding meetings with all the mayors very soon, to discuss the problem and proposals to deal with it.

In the meantime, McKenzie said that his ministry has requested an audit of the cemetery situation across the parishes, which is almost completed and will be used to inform those discussions.

He also stated that the ministry has already started a project to increase burial space by building new cemeteries in the various parishes.

“We have already started to build a cemetery in St Catherine, just outside Old Harbour, and St James is also scheduled to have a new cemetery built shortly,” he said.

Since 2014, the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) has been expressing concern that Jamaica is running out of public space to bury persons.

NEPA said then that the country was facing a crisis, and that people might need to start thinking about cremating and burning bodies, as cemeteries were threatening to occupy agricultural and environmentally sensitive lands.