Nghe An needs to soon have cremation service facilities

Birth, aging, sickness, and death are eternal stories. And no one has been able to resist that law of nature. People say, live well and die well. Others say that life is temporary, death is eternal; although in general, the "temporary" is still more respected and cared for than the "eternal" realm.

But in fact, death is not the end. Caring for death and caring for the dead is not only ethical but also legal. With the daily changes in the economy and society, the story of funerals must be in the category of concern, when it has begun to reveal many shortcomings.

Burial (direct burial by burial) is still a thousand-year-old custom of the ethnic minorities in Nghe An, which has the 4th largest population in the country with about 3.4 million people. The large population has a proportional death rate (it is known that the whole country has 98.3 million people, an average of 1,733 people die every day)...

That is only the average figure, not to mention natural disasters and epidemics. And the consequences of worrying about the "eternal" world are becoming more and more obvious; one of the most "headache" issues is the land area for burial. When a tomb is built, an area of ​​land is permanently concreted.

According to Circular 02/2010/TT-BXD dated February 5, 2010, the land area used for each burial grave is not small (adults from 5-8m², Children from 3-3.5m²for 1 grave). Let me temporarily calculate "mechanically" (compared with national data), on average each grave is equal to 6 m², multiply by the number of dead people and then multiply by 365 days, then each year with about 3.4 million yards, "roughly" Nghe An we have to set aside about 130 thousand square meters (13 hectares) for burial. That is just the burial area, not counting the roads to get to the grave! Wow, if you don't put pen to paper to calculate, few people can imagine such a "fearsome" number.

Along with soil is wood. Our people have always kept the habit of using solid wood to make coffins. But if you don’t “play” with wood, it’s usually not good wood. In some areas, even when they’re only in their 60s, the elderly are already busy preparing for their funerals.

So it is encouraging that in recent years, when neighboring provinces opened crematoriums, Nghe An people have begun to form the custom.cremationfor relatives when they pass away. Changing a custom, especially a custom related to spirituality, is not easy. The recent change in people's concept of burial is one of the advances that needs to be recognized, studied, evaluated to encourage and expand. Cremation not only ensures environmental hygiene, but also saves resources (because cremation is almost 100% using industrial wood coffins) and limits deforestation. Therefore, it is necessary to consider people's shift from burial to cremation as a civilized approach.

According to an informal survey by this author, it seems that the demand for cremation is increasing, while the ability to meet it is too inadequate. Long-distance travel and market monopoly lead to high cremation costs. Many families are "powerless". In fact, cremation is still not chosen by households with a below-average standard of living.

Because Nghe An does not have a crematorium, for a long time, when there is a funeral, people in the province still have to "snake" to Ha Tinh or Thanh Hoa. This has caused a lot of trouble because the roads are long and the procedures are sometimes complicated. It is known that recently, some Covid-19 patients died (recommended to be cremated to prevent the epidemic), but when transferred to crematoriums in other provinces, it was difficult to "pass through the checkpoint" due to administrative reasons of each locality. Obviously, this is a big problem. The prolonged lack of crematoriums can lead to not being able to meet the daily needs of the people in the province. Moreover, in a province with an area and population like Nghe An, people have to use cremation services of other localities, which is really disproportionate.

The Ha Tinh Universal Incarnation Station was inaugurated on January 15, 2017, at Dong Vinh hamlet, Bac Son commune, Thach Ha district (Ha Tinh).

The cremation area at the Ha Tinh Universal Crematorium is designed like a spiritual and cultural work.

Thanh Hoa Universe Transformation Station inaugurated on November 11, 2014.

Remember not long ago, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee even disciplined a leader of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment for "accidentally" issuing a document directing the facility to review the capacity of crematoriums to proactively prevent and fight Covid-19. The "crime" of this document was to cause confusion. But then just one year later, the answer turned against the previous excessive optimism. For several months, the Binh Hung Hoa crematorium was overloaded.

In life, unexpected things still happen. No one can predict anything, just like 2 years ago, no one thought about the Covid-19 epidemic. From the above-mentioned obvious lessons in other localities, it shows that building at least one crematorium in the near future in Nghe An cannot be left undone.

Nghe An is the hometown of President Ho Chi Minh, and every year the province still has plans to implement his will. It is also worth mentioning that in his will, he wrote: “I hope that the method of “cremation” will be popularized in the future. Because it is good for the living in terms of hygiene, and does not waste land. When we have more electricity, “electric cremation” will be even better.”

His whole life was spent caring for the people and the country, but our Uncle Ho never stopped thinking about his homeland with the desire to "build Nghe An into a prosperous province". Perhaps to become a "prosperous" province, we must not only focus on socio-economic development. Uncle Ho said, "Whatever is beneficial to the people, we must do our best". I think that investing in building a project to solve urgent problems for the people like a crematorium is certainly "beneficial to the people".