Ormoc City has started building a new public cemetery to address the shortage of burial plots, the city government said on Thursday.
With an allocation of PHP30 million, the four-hectare project in Can-Adieng village officially began last June 30 and will be completed on Oct. 22, 2022.
The new public cemetery will have big roads, parking spaces, an ossuary, a Potter’s Field for the indigents. There is also a proposal for a crematorium and columbarium.
“It will provide our underprivileged and indigent residents of Ormoc a decent place to bury their loved ones. We are also now about to close a deal for the purchase of adjacent lots for a bigger cemetery that will serve the needs of next generations,” Mayor Richard Gomez said in an interview.
The city will also build another cemetery in a two-hectare property in Valencia village and another one on the northwest part near the border of Merida town.
The new cemetery will have an administration office with enough manpower complement, according to the city government.
Gomez assured that there will be no more syndicates taking advantage of the need for burial spots.
The city government also disbanded the syndicate at the old public cemetery in Camp Downes village that was “running it like their private business.”
There was also an inventory on the status of niches in the old one, and have started transferring of the bones of those with expired contracts to the new ossuaries, the mayor reported.
“In the site for the new cemetery, there are niches already constructed, where the remains of those obstructing the proposed road will be accommodated. More will be constructed for the newly departed, though I am sure nobody is in a hurry to use them,” Gomez told reporters.
The city also prepared a 5,000 square meter area for Covid-19 deaths to make sure that the leachate will not contaminate the ground.
Ormoc is a first-class independent component city in Eastern Visayas with a population of 230,998 as of 2020.
The city is the major commercial hub in northwestern Leyte Island.
Source: Philippines News Agency
