Gravediggers charge up to seven times the official rate

Some of them are even building new graves on spots occupied by old ones.

KARACHI: Beware: there are opportunists in some of Karachi's graveyards who can charge you seven times the amount set by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) for burying people.

Gravediggers have been flouting charges set by the KMC and since it has not kept an eye on them, their attempts to fish extra money out of people's pockets go unstopped.

At one of the oldest cemeteries, Essa Nagri, located at Sir Shah Suleman Road, gravediggers tell people that there is no space but sing a different tune once offered twice the official rate. KMC has no record of the total number of graves at the Essa Nagri graveyard - it was officially closed last year, but gravediggers are reportedly offering to bury more bodies there.

Mehmood Alam Siddiqui, who heads KMC's graveyards department, told PPI that people should complain to him if they are overcharged. "The rate fixed by the city government is Rs2,000 for small graves and Rs2,500 for large ones. The amounts include Rs300 for digging the grave." He said that the price may go up if marble or other expensive material is used.

There are over 450 graveyards in Karachi, of which 192 are under KMC's jurisdiction. The gravediggers charge anywhere between Rs8,000 and Rs10,000 for a spot, and if it is close to the graveyard's entrance, the price may shoot up to Rs15,000.

Siddiqui said that KMC is building 20 more graveyards, including one at Gulshan-e-Hadeed which will have the capacity for about a 1,000 graves. Most of the city's cemeteries are almost out of space. In some of them, new graves are being built over old ones which have not been visited for a long time. Siddiqui said no gravedigger was allowed to do this without the permission of the buried person's family. He said that action would be taken against those gravediggers who were breaking this rule. He also said that there were no provisions in the law which allow anybody to reserve plots in graveyards.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2012.