Second wave taking toll on crematoria staff

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, May 4

The second wave of the Covid pandemic has taken a toll on the crematoria staff here as their workload has doubled in the last few days.

Now, the cremation ground management has appealed to the public for help in setting wood during cremation.

Senior officials of the district administration held a meeting with the management of the cremation ground today in the wake of high number of Covid deaths.

The management told the district administration that they have additional stock of wood and there would be no shortage of anything. They requested the administration to get the cremation ground sanitised repeatedly as the number of bodies being cremated every day has risen steadily over the month.

Rajan Garg, president Mahabir Dal, which manages the grain market cremation ground, said, “Employees are working overtime in this crisis – from cutting wood to doing other work, so I appeal to people who come to cremate the body of their relative to help in setting logs of wood along with the workers.”

He added that before Covid, around nine cremations used to take place in a day, but now it has risen to 25.

Garg said they have a designated capacity of 24 bodies for cremation, but they could accommodate 48 a day.

The situation is so bad that recently this cremation ground went out of space and nine bodies were burnt on the ground.