MONTEGO BAY, St James – Citing the dilapidated state of the decades-old Pye River Cemetery in St James, Councillor Dwight Crawford (Jamaica Labour Party, Spring Garden Division) has called for a $4.4-million beautification project at the unsightly burial ground.

Crawford, who was addressing last week’s regularly monthly meeting of the St James Municipal Corporation (SJMC), brought a resolution before the corporation for the funds to be disbursed from the Equalization Fund to undertake the well-needed project.

“It was Sir William Ewart Gladstone who said, ‘Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals’,” Crawford said.

He continued, “Whereas the Pye River Cemetery, which is the final resting place for a number of influential and iconic Jamaicans, has fallen into disrepair as a result of our revenue due to the [novel coronavirus] pandemic and whereas the estimate prepared by our technical department amounts to a sum of $4.42 million, I am hereby moving a resolution that this amount be provided from the Equalization Fund.”

The Equalization Fund was created in 1997 and is financed by 10 per cent of the money collected islandwide from property taxes.

All the 13 municipal corporations are allocated a percentage of the fund to carry out critical infrastructure work in their various divisions.

Following the meeting, Crawford, in whose division the Pye River Cemetery sits, shared that though the cemetery has been in a deplorable condition for some years because of neglect, it has got far worse due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Pye River Cemetery has been around for longer than I have been alive and I have adopted it in a bad condition…a condition that is not the way we would want to see it. I think what has compounded the challenge is the fact that for almost two years, we chipped into priority mode naturally because our own source of revenue was down significantly,” Crawford told the Jamaica Observer West.

“So, we were not able to do a lot of the things that we should be doing and as a result of that, a bad situation has gotten worse. I am now faced with two more years of not much being done so it has reached to a stage where a little bit more than cutting grass is needed.”

The first-term councillor pointed out that, currently, the Pye River Cemetery is in a bad state, noting that overgrown grass and trees need to be trimmed and pruned, adding that a number of the grave slabs are broken.

This, Crawford said, is a bad representation for the city of Montego Bay.

“Being the tourism capital, I don’t think that Pye River Cemetery is representative of the fastest growing city in the hemisphere.

“We can’t be the fastest-growing city in the hemisphere and boast about such an achievement while our dead people are being treated like they don’t matter. The Pye River Cemetery is not just a cemetery for where it is established, which is in the Spring Garden Division, but it is our parish cemetery where pretty much people from all four corners of St James have buried their loved ones dating very far back.”

The plan, the councillor said, is to have the cemetery cleaned and ready for the Christmas season so families can go and visit their loved ones.

“It is a significant amount of work, but it is needed and my hope is that even if I don’t complete it for Christmas, there will be a significant improvement…it would really be a dream come through for me if I could help some families get the chance to go and visit their deceased loved ones,” Crawford told the Observer West.

The proposal to beautify the Pye River Cemetery was welcomed by Byondlee Watson who told the Observer West that both his brother-in-law and father were buried there.

“As it is now, a facelift is really needed at Pye River. It would help me greatly because not having any children yet, with the passing of my dad, it is my intention that when I do have children, I will bring them there to show them where their grandfather is buried,” said Watson.

“With this project we will have better access to the cemetery because when it rains it is a challenge. When we went there last time they did some cutting of the grass to the area where the grave spot was but for the general area, it needs work. I have seen where the members of the parish council (municipal corporation) have been doing some de-bushing, I don’t know if they are in charge of the entire cemetery, but some more work needs to be done,” he added.

Watson shared that during his visit to the cemetery last month, he noticed that there were uncovered graves, exposing the clothes of deceased people.

“The area closest to the road is not in so much of a bad state…I was walking around and I saw some graves with no coverings…I could see the clothes in the graves because the tops are gone,” he told Observer West.

“In one of them the casket had deteriorated so I saw the clothes of a man in a grave; all of his remains were gone leaving his suit.”

He pointed out that families visiting their loved ones at the cemetery may become traumatised by such a sight.

“It could be very emotional for an individual knowing that this is where my relative was buried and to see the condition of the grave,” said Watson.

Another St James man, Bryan Bennett, shared that though Pye River Cemetery is the resting place for both his father and grandmother, he hasn’t visited the burial ground in ages because of its deplorable state.

“I haven’t been over there because you have to be walking on graves and you don’t know who is buried there,” said Bennett.

He also welcomed the proposed beautification project.

“I think it is a good project because over by Pye River is a woodland now so I mean, it really needs the beautification fi true,” Bennett told the Observer West.

“Before my mother died, she would go visit her mother over by Pye River to weed around the grave and put flowers on it, but that had to stop some years ago because the place got bushed-up like a woodland,” he added.