Russia (bbabo.net), - Penalties for the imposition of ritual services on relatives of the deceased are supposed to be introduced by a new bill on the funeral business. And a list of funeral organizations with prices for their services may appear on the public services portal.
Now the funeral industry is regulated by the law of 1996, which is long outdated, said Svetlana Razvorotneva, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Public Utilities, at a round table in the press center of Parliamentary Newspaper. The new bill is already the third attempt to amend this law. It is expected that it will be submitted to the State Duma by the end of March and adopted at least in the first reading in the spring session.
It is proposed, in particular, to introduce a ban on providing information about death to business representatives. Now the death of a person (and sometimes even shortly before it) is often reported to ritual organizations by hospital staff, after which the funeral agents immediately begin to attack the relatives of the deceased with their offers. Moreover, representatives of funeral organizations will be prohibited from being the first to contact the relatives of the deceased, Razvorotneva emphasized.
They will be able to offer services, send price lists only after a relative contacts this company himself. Violations of this procedure are subject to administrative fines.
Organizations that meet certain requirements will be allowed to work in this market. Among them is the presence of a certain material and technical base and qualified employees. The list of legally operating organizations is supposed to be posted on the public services website. At the same time, it is important that the prices of these organizations are also indicated, Razvorotneva noted. So that relatives can study offers, prices, reviews and already consciously, and not in a hurry, conclude an agreement. Now almost anyone can engage in ritual services, while, having concluded an agreement, such an agent often acts only as an intermediary, and the prices for funerals grow because of this.
It is planned to create a register of cemeteries and actual graves. This will enable relatives to prove their right to a burial, simplify the search for family burials, and also gradually eliminate the problem of ownerless graves. The bill begins to address the issue of citizens' responsibility for caring for the burial place, said Elena Andreeva, executive director of the Union of Funeral Organizations and Crematoria (SPOK). It will be possible to gradually introduce the obligation to care for the graves. In cases where a relative does not comply with it, certain procedures are provided in other countries.
About 40% of the graves in our cemeteries are ownerless
For example, after a certain period, the remains of such citizens are reburied in the so-called "Memory Fields", with the preservation of their data, indicating them on the stele. Many different respectful and gentle forms can be devised to preserve memory, she noted. Now in our cemeteries about 40% of the graves are ownerless, and officially an abandoned grave can only be recognized as ownerless by a court. If a relative moves, he can exhume and take the urn with the ashes with him, Andreeva noted. Or entrust care to someone else. This does not mean that the place in the cemetery becomes the property of the organization or person who undertook to keep order, the participants of the round table stressed.
Back to news | Reduction of the burial site, resale of graves, illegal services of migrants. A simple mechanism for the provision of funeral services, approved by the Moscow government, did away with this. There are shadow agents on the market even now, but they are recognized primarily by the cost of burial or cremation services, inflated tenfold.
“Since 2015, we have been relying on domestic human resources. Our staff of 3,500 people is exclusively Russian citizens,” said Artem Ekimov, head of the Ritual State Budgetary Institution (operator of all 136 cemeteries and three crematoria in Moscow). Within one visit to our funeral service center, you can receive a death certificate, a burial permit, include an order in the burial schedule, purchase ritual products, order catafal transport, organize a farewell ceremony and a memorial meal." There is no shortage of places in cemeteries, the city allocates new sites in a timely manner and equips them with cemeteries. Information about the company's services is available on the mos.ru portal, and the price list can be viewed on the cemeteries' website. The average check for a funeral in Moscow is about 135 thousand rubles.
On average, 100,000 people are buried in Moscow every year. According to Ekimov, any resident of Moscow, in the event of death, has the right to receive a burial place free of charge in one of the cemeteries open for this. The Khovanskoye, Alabushevsky and Yastrebkovskoye cemeteries are now open.
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