MONTEGO BAY, St James — There are no plans, currently, to conduct exhumations at Pye River Cemetery here.

Mayor of Montego Bay, Councillor Richard Vernon gave the assurance while speaking to the Jamaica Observer about the space on the heels of a massive clean-up exercise that has seemingly revitalised the aesthetics of the 129-year-old public facility that sits just off the Fairview Commercial Centre, mere metres from ATL Business Center in the second city.

“There is no intention, at this point in time, to look at anything like that. Based on law, legally, we can’t do anything,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“No exhumation, because to close a cemetery, it has to be done based on the [law]. It has to be out of use for approximately 50 years, unless there is some type of order from Parliament or the area to be used for development,” he added.

The recent clean-up exercise was more in line with preserving what exists.

“It is a part of the history of Montego Bay and we have to preserve the cemetery, just as how we’ve preserved our history in good order,” he explained.

“It is an historical site and there are persons who have made suggestions about the tourism aspect of it. It is not far-fetched. In New Orleans this is what happens, people do cemetery tours 10:00 pm in the evenings; I’ve been on one myself,” he continued.

The mayor also disclosed that there are plans to do a series of upgrades at the facility, including the erection of directory signage.

“The idea is to divide the cemetery into different phases, and within each phase they make a record of the internment of the persons in each phase and then you use the directory as a guide as to how to identify your family member or loved one, and which phase the body is resting and you can easily identify,” he said.

However, Vernon said the support of stakeholders will be needed to identify the deceased for the directory.

“In terms of identifying some of the graves, we will be inviting the churches and citizens to help us with that process because some of them remain unidentified, especially the older ones,” he disclosed.

“There are some persons who were born in 1901, 1902, died in 1996, so it’s clear it’s a very old cemetery. [The cemetery was established in] 1896, a little bit after Emancipation, but we need the support of the public to identify the family rested there,” he said.

He, however, admitted that it might not be as easy as it sounds, given what might be the hesitation by some to assist.

“It’s going to be a tedious task — and some people regard it as an eerie task — but it is going to be tedious because we have to check off all the graves and then you have to check the information on them to populate the directory,” he said.

But, that’s not all.

“The next thing is to do some painting and whitewashing of the area, and the maintenance of the vegetation. We are going to allow it to grow up to a certain point but the visuals would be looking at a cemetery looking green with white tops, that visualisation,” he said.

The clean-up exercise saw massive amounts of foliage being removed, giving a clear view of a number of graves.

“This is the first time the cemetery, as long as I can remember, has had this level of invasive cleaning. And it is not going back to square one, I can guarantee that, because we have systems in place to prevent that,” Vernon added.

As it relates to the affairs of the cemetery going forward, he said it “is more closed than open at the moment”.

“We have several alternatives but we are also looking at a new public cemetery,” he said. “We have not identified a location but we are looking at the possibility of that and looking where across St James we could facilitate such a cemetery — and the position is, if we can’t, then we have to look regionally.”

But, of course, this will require discussions with different partners.

“We have to look at western Jamaica and partner with the other municipalities to see if we can identify a regional public cemetery, because it is something that we must offer based on the justification of local government, based on our cemeteries Act.

“This is a public service that the local authority offers because not everyone can afford the private cemetery internment spots,” Vernon said.