JEDDAH, 8 August 2007 — The Jeddah Municipality has established seven new cemeteries in the last six months as part of a plan to ease the load on the city’s existing seven cemeteries, which are full and rarely accept new funerals.
In the past two years, Arabic newspapers have carried stories of people finding it difficult to bury loved ones at cemeteries in Jeddah. Some cemetery keepers were also reported to ask for money to carry out burials. Cemeteries in the city have become so full in recent years that people have been known to travel to nearby villages to bury their dead.
Muhammad Hijazi, head of the Security and Safety Services Department at the Jeddah Municipality, said that after realizing there was a problem, the municipality allocated an emergency budget of SR12 million to expand and maintain existing cemeteries in addition to establishing new ones.
Land has been allocated for cemeteries in the old Makkah Road area, the Al-Ajwad District to the east of Jeddah, Briman, the Dhahban area to the north of Jeddah, and two cemeteries close to the Makkah Highway. Seven cemeteries are currently being expanded in Thuwal, located toward the north of Jeddah, and at Al-Khomrah, which is located to the south of the city.
Hijazi said that the municipality has also designated a special cemetery to bury human parts in the Al-Harazat area to the east of Jeddah.
“The Jeddah Municipality has also increased the number of cemetery supervisors and provided new fully equipped vehicles to transport bodies from both hospitals and accident scenes... There are around 112 cemeteries in Jeddah that are scattered along residential districts but burial is currently confined in only the existing 14 cemeteries, which are now capable enough to contain the estimated 8,500 deaths per year in Jeddah,” said Hijazi.
