Cemetery keepers in Szczecin, north west Poland, are threatening to eradicate graves of people whose families don’t pay upkeep fees.

Families of the deceased are supposed to pay fees for a place in a cemetery once every twenty years. In Szczecin, the fee amounts to 200 zloty (around 50 euro) a year.

Administrators of the cemetery are currently putting red stickers with an inscription on burial graves made before 1989 saying, “Grave to be eradicated due to lack of the fees,”

“The stickers are reminders to the families who forget to pay. We give them a last chance,” says Maria Michalak, the head of the Szczecin Central Cemetery.

Ashes to ashes

Meanwhile, the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate,  has suggested an amendment to the bill on cemeteries and burials which would legalise families keeping the ashes of the departed in urns.

This would allow families to keep ashes in their houses or scatter them, according to the wishes of the deceased. At present the practice is forbidden by law, which says that all remains should be buried, even if a dead person wanted otherwise. Families who break the law may be punished with 5.000 zloty fine or 30 days in arrest. 

Both the demand for upkeep money for graves and the new ashes legislation are signs that authorities are trying to find solutions to the growing pressure on the often huge cemeteries in Poland, which are running out of space to bury the dead. (kk/pg)