“I almost fainted”: Calls for greater scrutiny of burial plots after incorrect grave exhumed

A leader from the funeral industry says the thumping trusts that run Victoria's cemetery sphere are inflating costs and causing inefficiencies that lavatory result in mistakes, such arsenic the 2022 marketing of a single cemetery plot twice – an fault that meant a body had to be exhumed.

In 2019, Stephen Sedrak's family bought six burial plots alongside each otherwise at Melbourne's Fawkner cemetery, in the hope information technology would be a place family could come to pay their respects to preceding generations.

In unconditioned, the plots cost about $27,000, accordant to 9News .

When Sir Leslie Stephen's uncle, Bakhit Sedrak, died in August 2019, the family was and so whelm with grief they barely noticed the plot two places down was freshly laid.

All the same, in the following days when they visited the situation, the family twigged to the error.

"It was awful. I most fainted and my Quaker saw me go yellow in the typeface," Stephen said.

When Greater Metropolitan Cemetery Trust became aware the plot had been oversubscribed twice, they issued an apology acknowledging the error and reached intent on the family WHO had bought the important already owned by the Sedrak sept.

Unsurprisingly, the family said the headphone scream was "disrespectful" and "really upset" them all.

"It was real hard to accept," one kinsperson penis told 9News.

Out of respect to the Sedraks, the family made the difficult conclusion to exhume the body from the grave.

As compensation for the shocking bungle, Greater Metropolitan Cemetery Trust gave them a premium position in the cemetery.

Eighteen months after this upsetting series of events, Stephen created a petition to raise cognisance of his family's plight and to raise the issue of compensation. At the time of writing, the petition had received 934 votes.

Greater Metropolitan Necropolis Trust has acknowledged the mistake, putt it down to "human wrongdoing", and has issued an apology to the Sedrak family. They have issued the Sedrak family with an offer of compensation. The trust has undertaken a review of its operations to ensure such an event does not occur over again, and has digitised gross sales records and introduced a new computing machine system.

Nigel Davies, director at Lonergan and Raven, Melbourne's oldest funeral home – and also the immediate past president of the National Funeral Directors Association – told 9News mistakes ut happen in the burial industry.

"I have stood at a gravesite in the country where the grave manager is insisting that there isn't a body buried there and the mortal operational the digger is insistence in that respect is.

"The tertiary bucketful brought skyward the coffin lid. At least so we could nam WHO was in that grave and correct the records.

"I take up likewise had cases where I have stood with the family and they have said that is non the flop grave, there is somebody else's distinguish on the headstone," Davies said.

Davies believes more of the problems in Victoria's burial industry come from the not-for-earnings cemetery trusts that accept a monopoly over all burials and cremations in the state.

"Every some other state has competition," Davies same. Every bit a result of the monopoly market, the costs of burial sites and cremations are far higher in Victoria than they are in other states.

The monopoly also way cemeteries aren't run as efficiently as they could follow, Davies determined.

https://hellocare.com.au/i-almost-fainted-calls-for-greater-scrutiny-of-burial-plots-after-incorrect-grave-exhumed/

Source: https://hellocare.com.au/i-almost-fainted-calls-for-greater-scrutiny-of-burial-plots-after-incorrect-grave-exhumed/