AMID the local real estate boom, Jamaicans are cashing in by digging up family plots to make way for houses, funeral directors have confirmed to the Jamaica Observer.

Four funeral homes that offer exhumation services — which is the removal of a corpse after burial — shared that the service is most popular among family members seeking to sell land that houses the remains of their ancestors. The remains are either reburied at another location or cremated.

President of Jamaica Association of Certified Embalmers and Funeral Directors Calvin Lyn disclosed that, while requests for the service vary by parish, his funeral home in Manchester — Lyn’s Funeral Home — receives approximately eight exhumation requests monthly.

“Sometimes it is the seller [and] sometimes it’s the buyer who does the application, but the reason would be that they want the land for building purposes — whether a dwelling house or a development with apartments and townhouses because they would need the space to do the development.

“Even in cases where a private person just wants to build a dwelling, they don’t want to have the graves around them, especially when the deceased persons are not relatives of the ones building the house,” Lyn told the Sunday Observer.

He said, too, that in some instances, his funeral home conducts mass exhumations. In fact, last January, his team moved five bodies from a family plot.

“You’ll find, based on my experience for 40 years, that the bauxite companies who would have bought lands, whereby in those early days people would bury on family plots or not in the public cemeteries, so the bauxite companies buying these lands would have to get the graves relocated,” Lyn explained, adding that mass exhumations is a common request from them.

Another funeral director, Gordon Chuck of Sam Isaacs and Sons, shared that the cost to exhume a body can start at about $250,000, inclusive of the fees to the municipal corporation, the public health department, and the funeral home.

He said that he receives 10 to 15 requests for the service annually, some of which have to be turned down because the 10-year benchmark set before a body can be exhumed had not been met.

He told the Sunday Observer that this requirement is waived by the court in circumstances where there was incorrect burial or burial in an incorrect water table zone. Additionally, the timeline might be waived to facilitate a police investigation.

The process typically requires a family member who has custody of the deceased or an individual who owns the land to request the service. The funeral home or landowner would then submit an application to the municipal corporation with authority in the parish where the remains are buried and the health department for approval.

If the body is to be reburied in another parish, an application also has to be submitted to the receiving municipal corporation for approval.

Once approval is granted, the disinterment process is carried out with a team from the health department, Jamaica Constabulary Force, and the respective funeral home.

“Whatever is found is a part of the remains. So even if things that are not biodegradable, like the plastics or you have the cradle that the flowers sit in that’s normally plastic, certain clothing items like a belt buckle… that doesn’t decay… would have to be removed from the site and they would be considered a part of the remains. So it’s not just bones or the actual person, but everything that was associated with the burial is considered the remains,” Chuck explained.

He noted that before, during, and after the exhumation, the area is sterilised to prevent the spread of diseases or viruses. Relatives are also required to state where the body will be reburied or if it will be cremated before the process begins. Remains that are exhumed must be reburied immediately or soon after exhumation.

“It may even be a situation where on the same family plot where the remains are, they want to do something in that section — construction or something — so they may want to move the remains to the back of the property…If it is a migration situation, they may want to cremate the remains and then take the cremated remains with them if they are migrating to a different country or burial at a different location,” said Chuck.

He noted, too, that the state of both public and private cemeteries in Jamaica, such as May Pen and Calvary cemeteries in Kingston, is another reason bodies are being exhumed.

“I know there has been in the news recently where certain public cemeteries are just not being cared for and are heavily overgrown, so you can’t even access your family member. We get [requests] like that, where they just want to be able to pay respects and probably visit every year or whatever the case may be, so they exhume from that run-down cemetery and take [the remains] to another cemetery where they have access,” Chuck told the Sunday Observer.

In a series called ‘Dissing the Dead’ last April, the Sunday Observer visited select public cemeteries across the island, many of which were in deplorable condition. They included May Pen, Annotto Bay, and Port Maria cemeteries, as well as the No 5 Cemetery in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

These locations had overgrown bushes covering the graves, animals roaming the grounds, homeless people seeking shelter in old mausoleums, and garbage lining the walkways. There have also been reports of people having difficulty locating their relatives’ graves due to the disorganised state of public cemeteries.

In March last year, the local government ministry allocated $200 million for the cleaning of public cemeteries across the country.

Scott Roman, director at Roman’s Funeral Home, added that families also conduct exhumations because they no longer wish to have their loved ones buried.

“With the change in trends in disposition, people are now having exhumations done to proceed with cremations, so that they can have the ashes of their loved ones placed with other family members or for keeping in keepsake jewellery or to have other methods of disposition done with them,” he shared.

In light of a recent report that a St Elizabeth man accused of illegally exhuming his father in Bigwoods district was arrested, individuals seeking to carry out the process are being urged to use qualified professionals to prevent the spread of diseases.

“You have people who do buy a property and don’t even realise [it has remains] because you have some graves that are covered up, and they don’t even realise that there is a grave right there, and so they definitely want it to be removed. Sometimes they will probably just try to remove it themselves. They might buy a property in the country [rural area] or something, and you have graves that were overgrown with either trees or bushes…and then when they’re ready to lay their foundation, they buck up on these graves,” said Anoush Smith, cremation manager at Madden’s Funeral Home.

“They definitely should get legitimate people on board to have them relocated, and that can even give suggestions on what to do with them afterwards. I think they really should. You never know how that person died. Remember how we have cholera cemeteries and those things; you don’t know how long this person [was buried], [and] you don’t know what kind of cause of death this person had,” she said.

“Seek professional help. Go to the professionals. Everybody doesn’t offer it, but seek someone who definitely can help out in that situation and who is authorised to do it,” she urged.