State is dragging its feet on cremation

Your piece ‘What about cremation?’ within the story about the Mavrou grave scandal (October 8) shows yet again the necessity for a crematorium in Cyprus.

There have been nine years of discussion about this issue. Countless letters and emails have been sent to the Ministry of the Interior through the last three years in particular. Couple this pressure with the regular and extensive editorial coverage in your newspaper, yet still we read there is “a cross-ministerial committee that is preparing a Bill to regulate the establishment and operation of crematoria in Cyprus”. How long will that take to emerge with definitive results? Weeks, months, years?

We learn that there was a 2006 Council of Ministers decision allowing foreign nationals who die on the island to be cremated. Since there was no cremation facility then – as now – what was the point of making such a decision which couldn’t be implemented?

Why was there no concerted effort at the same time to get on with sorting an issue which has no downside, and which attracts no dissension from any quarter? Some 5,000 names have been collected in support of the facility being provided here, and we know the Archbishop has made clear he has no objection in principle.

Letters to the Ministry of the Interior go unanswered. ’Discussions’ are apparently everlastingly taking place, but with no announcements about progress. Meanwhile, cemeteries are being clogged up; there are horrendously expensive body repatriations to a country where cremation can be offered and all we hear from government is that yet another committee is addressing the issue. What can there possibly be left to talk about that hasn’t been endlessly covered many times over? 

The bureaucratic procrastination and a seeming lack of will is unforgivable and almost heartless when the need is so overwhelming. 
 
Clive Turner,
Paphos

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.