Havana Cuba. – From the Entronque de Herradura council, belonging to the Consolación del Sur municipality, in Pinar del Río, the opposition member, human rights activist and former political prisoner of the group of 75 Eduardo Díaz Fleitas denounces the serious situation existing in the funeral services of the municipality.
By telephone, the activist announced that for more than five years the Municipal Directorate of Funeral Services of Consolación del Sur has not had specialized cars, since the two existing ones have permanent breakdowns, so that to transport the corpses the relatives of the Deceased persons must generally choose to hire passenger cars or some other type of private transportation.
The opponent explained that on December 19, 2022, when the citizen María Ordaz Benítez died in the Entronque de Herradura polyclinic, the transport sent by the institution was a dilapidated car that the neighbors had to push to get it to start.
Diaz Fleitas It also noted that although that citizen died in the early hours of the morning, the funeral service was not available until after 2:00 in the afternoon.
The Consolación del Sur municipality is currently populated by more than 90,000 inhabitants distributed in some 20 popular councils.
The activist stressed that the responsibility of providing funeral services for all the councils falls on the municipal head because in the rest of the territory it does not have transportation or coffins. Some of the councils do not even have a public place to watch over the corpses (the Entronque de Herradura funeral home, for example, was transformed into an agricultural market). The former political prisoner added that for at least three months the quota of coffee and sugar that was sold when contracting the service disappeared.
Likewise, the director of the Alianza Democrática Pinareña stressed that not only are mortuary niches not being built by the State, but also the authorities of the local cemetery do not authorize the sale of land to the residents so that they can build it on their own ―at despite the fact that there is space available― as they allege that such a proceeding is prohibited at the national level. The deceased are then sent to other cemeteries in nearby towns such as Guanes, more than 100 km from the Consolación del Sur funeral home. A crematorium, on the other hand, only exists in the provincial capital.
