Funeral services protested in Rome on Friday over a desperate situation that, according to them, left nearly two thousand coffins in the Italian capital weeks or even months to be cremated.
Although the coronavirus did not help the situation, the increase in deaths and limited access to public services caused by the pandemic exposed only a long – standing problem blamed on the old Italian nemesis bureaucracy.
“We call on the Mayor of Rome to end the current procedures needed to end a cremation,” Giovanni Caccioli, national secretary of the Italian Federation of Funeral Homes, told AFP during the rally.
As the undertakers stood next to their hearse, they laid wreaths around the Roman temple of Hercules Victor, near the office of Mayor Virginia Raggi, with notices that read: ‘Sorry, they will not allow us to bury your loved ones. ‘
According to Caccioli, Rome registers approximately 15-18,000 requests for cremations annually, for which families must undergo a “tortuous” bureaucratic journey involving the local cemetery, the AMA municipal agency and the registrar’s office.
Earlier this week, a grieving son, Oberdan Zuccaroli, staged a very personal protest by setting up billboards around Rome with the message: “Mommy, sorry, I could not bury you yet.”
But he is by no means the only one for whom the delays have exacerbated the pain of losing a loved one.
“It’s been three months since I waited for my husband’s cremation, and nothing has been done yet,” said Lorella Pesaresi, whose husband died in January after testing positive for coronavirus while undergoing chemotherapy. .
“It’s not fair – coronavirus and now it is,” she told AFP.
– Can not continue –
Caccioli said the paperwork to obtain a cremation permit is still being done by hand and the process takes an average of 35 to 40 days in Rome, an absurd situation.
He noted that other cities had done so within a day or two, adding: “We can not go on like this.”
Maurizio Tersini, who runs Le Sphinx’s funeral home, says about 1,800 coffins are currently waiting to be cremated in Rome.
“The biggest problem is a bureaucratic problem,” the 59-year-old told AFP, adding: “This is a great suffering for the families.”
However, this is not a new problem.
The union Cgil warned in September that hundreds of coffins were piling up at the Prima Porta-Flaminio Cemetery in Rome after one of the other two main cemeteries in the city, Laurentino, no longer had space for funerals.
“They did not do what was decided in 2017, namely to build four new crematoria and expand Laurentino,” Cgil’s head in Rome, Natale Di Cola, told AFP on Friday.
The situation was exacerbated by the pandemic, which according to the official toll claimed more than 116,000 lives in Italy – although Rome has not been hit as hard as other regions.
“What was a crisis turned into chaos,” Di Cola said.
AMA, the city hall agency that manages the cemeteries, said in a statement earlier this week that the situation is under control and that efforts are continuing to clear cemeteries.
It added that during the period from October 2020 to March 2021, it was confronted with a 30 percent increase in deaths on an annual basis.
glr-ar-aa / har