Developers to make room for graves

Theresia Sufa, The Jakarta Post/Bogor

The urgent need to expand public cemeteries has prompted the Bogor municipal administration to enforce Bylaw No. 15/1999 on developers' provision of two percent of land for graveyards.

"The administration plans to establish Muslim cemeteries of five hectares total across five districts. Developers processing their real estate development permits through the administration are required to give two percent of their land toward the cemetery," Bogor sanitation and parks official Dodi Effendi said recently.

There are about 150 developers operating in the 11,850 hectare (ha) city. However, Dodi did not mention whether sanctions would be imposed on developers that refused to allocate land for the cemetery.

At present, Bogor has two Muslim cemeteries: the 6.48 ha Dreded Cemetery on Jl. Pahlawan, South Bogor, and the 6.67 ha Blender Cemetery at Tanah Sareal district. Burial plots in both cemeteries have been full for the past few years -- 4,080 corpses are buried in Blender and about 3,600 are buried in Dreded.

In both cemeteries, the management must bury a new corpse in the same plot as an old grave or in the same plot as an unmarked grave.

Dodi said the administration did not have the same problem with non-Muslim cemeteries, of which Bogor has two: the 2.18 ha Cipaku Cemetery and the 41.1 ha Gunung Gadung Cemetery. Most graveyards in the cemeteries belong to Jakartans.

To maintain a plot at the Muslim cemetery, the family of the deceased must pay between Rp 17,000 (US$1.87) and Rp 45,000 every year for three years, while non-Muslim cemeteries charge from Rp 72,375 to Rp 235,000 under the same conditions.

"The fee for Muslims is lower, because they already pay other fees for drawing up a death certificate at the subdistrict office and for its processing by the cemetery management," Dodi said.