Rawalpindi residents face hard choices to bury their dead

Undertakers offer option to either flatten a grave of aggrieved’s relatives or one of their choosing

RAWALPINDI: Even though there are 54 graveyards in Rawalpindi, none of them has space to accept any more funerals. Hence, delays in the construction of new graveyards in the city have caused concerns amongst the public.

Citizens are thus compelled to reuse old graves by paving over them to bury their loved ones. Moreover, gravediggers charge exorbitant sums for this purpose.

According to a survey conducted in Rawalpindi by Daily Express, there is no more room for new graves in the existing graveyards of the city.

Families who have suffered the loss of a loved one are usually offered two options by gravediggers, either to point out any grave of their own family member or the undertaker can select an old, unclaimed grave for the burial of the deceased.

Undertakers term these graves as “empty”. Once either option has been approved by the family, the undertaker either digs these graves and readies them anew or flattens them. For this purpose, undertakers charge up to Rs25,000  while the graves remain coarse even after such a huge sum changes hands.

Such graves were being made in the Pir Wadhai Graveyard, Dhoke Ratta Graveyard, Dhoke Chiragdin Graveyard, Dhoke Ilahi Baksh Graveyard, Dhoke Khabba Graveyard, Karbala Graveyard, Harley Street Graveyard, Shah Di Talyan graveyard and the New Katariyan graveyard

Chaudhary Aqeel, who was looking for a grave in one of the graveyards, said that his uncle had just died but he could not find any space in the graveyard for his burial.

He complained that the civic body of the city was paying no attention to resolve the acute shortage of space in graveyards.

Moreover, with some of the graveyards lacking a boundary wall, drug addicts and wild animals keep roaming around the graves. In some cases, some influential people have also grabbed lands meant for graveyards and have built houses on them. Citizens urged the city administration to work on providing basic facilities such as graves while they urged the government to allocate land to build new graveyards in the city.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2019.