JakartaPost-Oct 29
Jakarta is grappling with a shortage of burial land as its cemeteries have either reached or exceeded capacity, sparking concerns over increased commercialization of resting places for the city’s dead. At least 69 of the capital’s 80 public cemeteries (TPU), or a whopping 86.25 percent, are full, while some of the remaining 11 cemeteries are at over 80 percent capacity, according to the Jakarta Parks and Forestry Agency. This leaves only 118,000 graves and many fearing that the available plots will dwindle quickly in the coming years. Many residents, especially those from low- and middle-income groups, depend on free burial plots at public cemeteries to bury their loved ones in Jakarta, where land is increasingly scarce and costly. Following rapid growth in its population over the past few years, the Jakarta provincial administration has built new public cemeteries as well as expanded the capacity of existing TPU. The latter includes stacked burials, or the practice of burying more than one casket atop others in a single vertical plot. A 2007 bylaw on cemeteries allows the use of a single grave for burying the remains of more than one person, typically from the same family. The original plot must be at least three years old before another body can be added to the grave, and the maximum depth of the topmost casket must be 1 meter belowground. Even so, the gap between available space and demand remains large, and many cemeteries have been forced to stop offering new plots due to insufficient land. One such example is the Grogol Kemanggisan Public Cemetery in West Jakarta. Its 2-hectare Muslim burial site contains around 17,000 bodies, some sharing the same plot with up to four others. Read more at:
