Bulawayo City Council Considers Banning Child Burials
The City of Bulawayo is proposing to ban burials of children between the ages of zero to twelve years and make cremation mandatory.
Cremation is the disposal of a dead person’s body by burning it to ashes, typically after a funeral ceremony.
The mandatory cremation of children will save burial space which is increasingly becoming scarce in the country’s second-largest city, according to councillors.
During a council meeting, the Director of the Health Services Department, Dr Edwin Sibanda, said that the Bulawayo City Council had leased a plot of land at Luveve Cemetery to a private contractor who had built a crematorium.
The local authority and the contractor plan to cut cremation fees for children aged zero to twelve years to $30.
Councillor Felix Mhaka supported the cremation of zero to 12-year-old children and proposed that funerals of children between the ages of zero and 12 years should be prohibited with effect from 1 February 2023.
The councillors concurred residents should be encouraged to embrace cremation to save burial space. | CITE
