Lord's Ridge Cemetery served the city from 1886 but it's time is past…and After one year of works, today the first body was laid to rest at the City's new cemetery at mile 13 on the Western Highway. Well that was not the only thing going on this evening. While the funeral was taking place - funeral directors were gathering - getting ready to brief the media on the newly proposed prices for grave spaces - that was presented to them by the Belize City Council. According to these undertakers, these prices are downright - ridiculous.
David Coye, Undertaker
"The proposed prices, like say the ground space $75 and up ,here (it's) $250. We open a grave space that is what is important now. At Lord Ridge Cemetery if you own a space there and you want to use that space again you have to pay City
Council $500.00 just to get permission to use that space that you own. The fee for a ground space to use again is $50.00. If it is a tomb space for you to reopen that tomb, you used to pay the City Council $100.00. Now it's 400% more which is $500.00 to get the permission to use that space at Lord Ridge, so who so ever have space at Lord Ridge prepare yourself to pay $500.00 for you to use your own space. $400.00 more than the old price."
Wayne Usher, Belize City Councillor
"We cannot charge any fee now other than what we are charging because the law hasn't been passed yet. Whatever fee is there on the books are fees that we are proposing to be charged, let's understand that from the onset. The fees remain the same right now, but let us be factual, how can we conceive of charging this same $75.00 and $150.00 to come 13 more miles out of town? How can we charge the same? It just doesn't make any sense. They have to transport the materials, the sand,
the gravel, the cement, the steel; we have to transport our workers so naturally by coming out of town the price will have to go up somehow."
From what we understand - the newly proposed price for an open grave space which was only 75 dollars at the Lord Ridge Cemetery is now two hundred and fifty dollars. The proposed price to reopen a grave - which was 50 to a 100 dollars is 500 dollars. And the proposed price for a baby space which was 30 dollars at the Lord Ridge Cemetery is now a hundred dollars. The undertakers held their press conference a bit late in the evening, and we'll have much more on this story in our newscast tomorrow.
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