Stakeholders unhappy with unregulated funeral homes

WESTERN BUREAU:

In a frightening revelation, businessman Paul Patmore, owner/operator of Patmore’s Funeral Home in Lowe River, Trelawny, says unregulated funeral homes could be used as a loophole to cover up criminal activities, including concealing murders.

According to Patmore, the unregulated funeral homes, which are springing up at an alarming rate, could easily be used to pick up bodies, store them, and then dispose of them, unknown to the authorities.

“The regulations governing the operations of funeral homes have been in existence for over 60 years with no amendments,” said Patmore. “It is not illegal to put up a sign saying you are a funeral home operator and keep the body in a freezer underneath a breadfruit tree in the back of your yard.

“The regulations are such that I, who am a government contracted funeral director, can have a body stored for over two years without a burial because the person died in an accident, and no relative has come forward to identify it,” added Patmore.

The businessman said that because of the absence of regulations, to include the involvement of the Public Health Department, persons who have been reported missing could have died and be kept at these unregulated funeral homes and then buried, contrary to the regulation of the public health authorities.

“It is illegal to sell a drink of rum at your home. The public health officer can prosecute you for selling the rum, but he can do nothing to a man who is storing a dead body anywhere in his home,” said Patmore.

According to him, the police cannot stop an individual from storing a body at his home, once it can be established that no foul play was involved in the death of the person being stored.

“Once the police have established that there is nothing illegal surrounding the death, you can do whatever you want with it,” said Patmore,

President of The Jamaica Embalmers Association Calvin Lyn, who operates Lyn’s Funeral Home in Christiana, Manchester, said he, too, is concerned about the unregulated funeral homes.

“Members of my association have to be trained and certified at a mortuary school,” said Lyn. “These ‘hurry come up’ funeral home operators do not have to show any qualifications if they go to the Registrar of Companies to register as a funeral home.”

Lyn added that, since 2017, he has had discussions with Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton but the situation continues to exist and is becoming increasingly problematic.

“The latest information is that it is with the Chief Parliamentary Council,” said Lyn. “In the meantime, the number of funeral homes has ballooned from just under 300 in 2017 to over 600 in 2022. There have been cases where the body for a funeral is so badly prepared, that it has to stay outside of the church.”

Garth Wilkinson, a former mayor of Falmouth, said he wants to see the unregulated funeral homes either closed or properly regularised because of their potential to be used in nefarious ways.

“Over one year ago, I moved a resolution at a municipality meeting (Trelawny Municipal Corporation) seeking to have funeral homes regulated. The last information is that it is with the Ministry of Local Government. The snail’s pace of dealing with these matters need to become a thing of the past,” said Wilkinson.