June 20, 2013
SYDNEY (AFP) - A funeral home in the Papua New Guinea capital came under fire Thursday for reportedly burning unclaimed bodies in an open pit after nearby residents complained of the stench.
Police and public health officials in the poverty-stricken Pacific nation went to the Dove Funeral Home in Port Moresby to investigate and found undertakers throwing two or three bodies at a time on the open fire, fuelled by wood.
"I was expecting a proper incinerator with a chamber for cremation to take place," health inspector Honk Kiap told the Post-Courier newspaper.
"But instead I saw an open fire place where I was told that workers pile huge logs in to the fire place and then throw in two or three bodies at a time and then pile more fire wood until the bodies become ashes."
A policeman who accompanied Kiap said he was stunned by what he saw.
"There was a skull and a hand still burning with the firewood when we arrived and I was not impressed and I felt like punching those responsible because it's just not Papua New Guinea culture where we burn our dead," he said.
"Instead we respect our dead and give them a decent burial. If it's cremation fair enough, but in a decent chamber, not in the open."
A local resident told the newspaper he had been smelling a foul odour for some time and thought someone had been roasting pig, until he realised it was coming from the funeral home.
Reports said up to 100 unclaimed bodies, including babies, from Port Moresby General Hospital morgue had been burned in this way.
Police and health officials ordered the undertakers to cease operations until a proper facility was built.
