The unsettling sight of a desecrated grave, the remains of the deceased left vulnerable to the elements, angered workers assigned to clear overgrown pathways inside Friendship Cemetery near Bath, St Thomas.

“Dem just come and thief the remains. A last week we over here a chop out and a so we find it,” one worker told the Jamaica Observer on April 18, adding that he was not sure when the grave had been defiled.

The coffin lay shattered, some of its contents spilled into a plastic bag outside the grave, the remainder sticking out from dirt inside in the tomb. The identity of the deceased remains a mystery, lost to the annals of time and neglect.

“We don’t know whose grave it is or if their family member know because it has no name. A nuff times dem things yah happen. Look over there at the next grave, it looks as if them try buss it and it never did a pull, so them just ‘low it,” the angry worker said, adding that the incidents had not been reported to the police.

There is nothing friendly or kind about the way in which Friendship Cemetery has been allowed to deteriorate.

Located deep in the forested area of Bath off a rocky path far from civilisation, the cemetery is shrouded in foliage, with weathered tombstones covered in dried up leaves. Broken tree trunks protrude from the earth surrounding tombstones, a sign that the burial ground was once heavily forested. Chopped tree branches also lay on once -colourful graves which have lost some of their pigment.

The cemetery, like many graves buried within, lacks identification, devoid of a sign that would let visitors know they are at the correct location. It is also unclear as to where the burial ground begins and ends as there is no perimeter wall.

“Sometimes all one five, six year before them clean it again, and the place just bush up,” another worker complained. He said, too, that there are other broken tombs inside the cemetery.

He said that in previous years he had reached out to St Thomas Municipal Corporation, offering his services to clean the cemetery. However, he said he was told on those occasions that he wouldn’t be paid because there was no money allotted to the corporation to clean the cemetery.

In March this year an allocation of $200 million was made available for the cleaning of public cemeteries across the country. This, the worker said, is why the cemetery was finally given some attention.

The owner of a funeral home, when asked about the state of public cemeteries in the parish, said that Friendship “is the worse one”.

“Friendship Cemetery, dem just bury anywhere,” he said. “When you a bury down a Friendship it come een like all on the roadside the people dem start bury. You sometimes have to walk on top of other graves with the casket to reach where you are going because there are no pathways inside there to walk, so it kinda hard to bury inside there,” he said.

“Nuff time we a try lift up the casket and dem a rub on the bush or a get scratch up because the graves too close,” he added.

“The cemeteries up here [are] in a deplorable condition; they need to be cleaned,” he said.