One-way tickets for final journeys

KARACHI: Zuhra may be only 53 years old but she is preparing to meet her Maker - in Layyah. “My time [here] is over,” she says while packing her suitcase. “I want to be buried in my family graveyard. If I die in Karachi I fear that my sons would not even be able to take my body to the village”

These preparations may be morbid but to people like Zuhra they are best tackled instead of left to other people. Hundreds of people who move to Karachi with their families decide to die in their hometowns because of the cost. They come from different areas and different backgrounds but one thing that unites them is the longing to be buried in their own soil.

Most of the time, their wishes cannot be fulfilled, once again because there is just not enough money to take them back.

“I came here because I was living alone in my house in the village since both of my daughters and my son settled in Karachi after their marriages,” explains Zuhra, who worked as a cleaning lady at a school. She decided to retire when doctors advised her to rest more because of her asthma.

“I know I will die soon,” she sighs. Her decision was influenced largely by the death of a neighbour Rahim Khan, who was buried in Karachi because his family could not afford to take him to his hometown in Swat. “Now he is buried in a place he has no ties to, where no one cares,” she laments.

It is not easy, however, as costs have nearly doubled over two years. According to the information collected by The Express Tribune, it takes around Rs50,000 to move bodies from Karachi to Peshawar and Rs40,000 to take them to Lahore.

At present, four non-government organisations and private transporters provide the services. They include the Edhi welfare ambulance service, the Azam welfare ambulance service, the Jamal ambulance service and the Community ambulance service.

Edhi charges Rs18 per kilometre (km) while the Azam service is for Rs20 per km, the Community service charges are Rs23 per km and the highest are the Jamal ambulance’s fees at Rs24 per km.

Azam service’s chief Muhammad Bashir says that the prices have risen because of the recession. However, he does not feel that the costs are too high. He justifies the difference in their charges and that of Edhi’s by saying that his ambulance services are better. “Our ambulances are luxurious and the driver will run the vehicle according to your instructions - going non-stop,” he says. They charge Rs34,000 for Peshawar and for Lahore Rs27,000.

Edhi’s public information officer, Zaman, at their centre in Civil Hospital, Karachi is self-complimentary. “Check the other services and you will see the difference yourself,” he says.

Perhaps one indication of the financial pinch is the drop in numbers: 207 bodies were taken from Karachi to other provinces during the first four months of 2008, the number slid to 143 in the first four months of 2009 and to just 13 in 2010, a drop of almost 94 per cent.

In addition to the transportation costs, there are other expenditures such as coffin making. A coffin costs around Rs10,000 on average and there are five coffin makers in Karachi.

Antonio Couthino, which is located in the Cantonment market near St Patrick’s school, is one of the oldest dealers in coffins. Alan Lob, a coffin maker who has worked with Couthino, said that the cost depends on the type and quality of coffin. “It can cost from Rs8,000 to Rs80,000,” he said.

According to him, even the business of coffin making is in crisis.

Interestingly, the charges of moving a body by air cargo are the lowest.

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) charges Rs6,000 to transport a body and at least one family member needs to travel on the same plane.

But in this case the procedure is much more tiresome.

You need to reserve your seat and the cargo at least 16 hours in advance, said PIA cargo officials. You also need to have a death certificate from a medical legal officer in addition to a certificate from the coffin maker. PIA also requires travel documents of the deceased and the person who is travelling along with the body.

“It is just better to bury the bodies in Karachi,” said Aslam, Zuhra’s son, adding that either that or the elders should simply go back to their villages and spend their last days there. “Rs60,000 is a lot for us,” the 40-year-old man says. “Even if we work day and night we cannot save this amount in our lifetime.”

Like many of the other migrants in the city, Aslam is a daily wage labourer and barely makes ends meet. “It would be better to spend a smaller amount of money on her health in the village so that she could live for two more years,” he concludes.

To bury or not to bury

Azhar Hussain, a grave digger who has been working at the Sakhi Hasan graveyard for the past 20 years, says that the minimum price of a grave set by the Sindh government is Rs4,000 but it can go up to Rs10,000. These charges include grave digging, cementing slabs and placing tombstones. The revenue generated is shared by the grave digger, the union council and the provincial government, since it owns most of the burial land in Karachi.  The minimum fee is the same for any location within the cemetery and they don’t classify certain sections as being better than others. However, faking a lack of space for a grave is a common practice among the gravediggers and they manage to procure a high enough fee from people who may want their dead ones to lie next to a relative in a nearby neighborhood.

with additional reporting by hira siddiqui

Published in the Express Tribune, June 14th, 2010.