Jamaica Customs Agency yesterday appealed to 19 individuals to collect urns containing the remains of their loved ones that have been left at the island’s two main international airports, some for as long as three years.

Customs issued the appeal in a notice placed in the daily newspapers in which it advised that failure to collect the urns within a month of the published notice will result in Customs “taking the necessary steps to hand over the remains to the authorised regulatory body for disposal”.

“If they don’t come in we will have to hand them over to the public health authorities to dispose of them because we can’t keep them in our facilities,” Selina Clarke Graham, Customs’ senior director for Kingston operations, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

She provided the newspaper with the procedures for clearing human remains, which stated that the following documents are necessary:

• Death certificate;

• Affidavit from the funeral home (signed by a certified embalmer from the country where the death took place);

• Cremation certificate;

• Letter from the health department in the country where the death took place, stating that there were no communicable diseases at the time; and

• A permit from the Ministry of Health through the Public Health Department.

The agency said that the cremated remains will be released on the presentation of these documents to Customs at the airport.

In the case of a corpse, it will be examined by police and Customs officers before clearance is given and after the documents are presented.

The agency also advised that a corpse must be in a hermatically sealed coffin.

“If you don’t have these permits, when the remains come in we have to detain the item for you to get all of the above documents. Because you can understand the health implications if we were to release remains and we don’t know the cause of death, etc,” Clarke Graham said.

“I can understand the challenge with some people. They come in and they’re devastated, but we have to safeguard our country,” she added.

Commissioner of Customs Velma Ricketts Walker said she was told about the problem with the urns after she took office in April this year.

“I sought to find an approach, and instead of just disposing of them we said let us put it in the papers, just to see if any family members would be aware and would want to take possession,” she said.

Of the 19 uncollected urns, 12 are at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston. The remainder are at Sangster International in Montego Bay.