PNG: City not place to bury the dead

Residents of Lae in Papua New Guinea have been told they are not allowed to bury their dead in the city’s residential areas.

Concerns have been raised in the media that some people in the city were burying their dead in their compounds and not in designated public cemeteries.

Lae City manager Roy Kamen said people who were thinking of burying their deceased in their residential properties should know it was against a law which prohibited people from burying the dead anywhere in the city.

He said it would be against health and hygiene standards.

Kamen said anyone with information about people illegally burying their dead in the city should contact Lae police or the council so that they could attend to the situation.

Meanwhile, former Lae City Council policing unit’s Simon Yipam expressed disgust over the reports.

He said traditional voodoo and customs of dead burial should be practiced in the villages and not in a metropolitan city like Lae.