| By Romila BoodramIt will be the last thing that most people will think about, but death is inevitable.And Guyana is no different from the rest of the world. It can prove quite a hassle or an expensive event for family members when their loved ones pass away.A funeral can run family members into hundreds of thousands of dollars.According to a local funeral home, the least it will cost to keep a body for three days is $110,000. This does not include the wake nights and transportation cost.The owner of the local parlour said that the $110,000 is the cheapest package offered by his funeral home. With that, family members are provided with three days storage, a simple coffin and a tomb at the Le Repentir Cemetery.If people wish to leave the body of their relatives at the funeral home beyond those three days, an additional $3,500 will be added to their bill daily.Also, the funeral home only provides burial at the Le Repentir Cemetery,Wholesale Jerseys, so if relatives want their dead to be laid to rest elsewhere, they are required to either build their own tomb or pay the parlour additional money for the adjustments.I contacted a middle class family, who recently buried one of their relatives. According to the family, the total cost of the event was close to $325,000.They claimed that they had to purchase clothes and other items for their dead, and provide refreshments for the wake nights.“We serve coffee, kool-aid, biscuits and cook-up-rice to people and we had to pay the parlour extra money to keep the body for three more days because we were expecting overseas relatives,” the sister of the deceased stated.Another woman, Bibi Rehanna Khan, said she wanted to give her aunt a decent funeral so all of her relatives came together and organized a six-day wake. The cremation was done on the seventh day.“The wake nights weren’t too big; they were reasonable. We served coffee and cherry juice and biscuits. The wake alone came up to $35,000, and we provided three buses to take people to the cremation ground. That cost us a further $11,000.”She said that the cremation cost $41,000 and she was required to pay the parlour $111,000.“We are Hindu so we had our 10 days and 13 days religious work.”On April 26 last, a contractor, Yudashram Dookhie, died after a collision with a truck.Yesterday, Dookhie’s wife, Debbie, told Kaieteur News that she spent $478,000 for the funeral. This included the cremation, wake nights and the religious work. |
