Catholic bishops in the Philippines have called for the dignified burial of dead prisoners as the authorities in the country’s biggest penitentiary started burying 200 unclaimed, decomposing bodies.
The authorities at the New Bilibid Prisons Cemetery in Muntinlupa City started the process of disposal of the unclaimed bodies on November 25 following an order from the Department of Health stating the health hazards entailed in keeping corpses in closed facilities.
The Health Department’s Nov. 22 order “strongly recommended” the disposal of the bodies due to pending infection caused by decaying corpses.
“We need to dispatch the bodies according to the advisory of the Department of Health for the safety of our prison facilities. As much as we would like to wait for their loved ones to claim their bodies… but we cannot wait because we need to dispose of them for public health reasons,” Bureau of Correction officer Donald Worones told.
The 60 bodies were the first batch to be disposed of among the 200 unclaimed bodies, he said.
“We have been waiting for their families to reclaim the remains because some were already in their advanced state of decompo-sition and some were already mummified,” Worones added.
The Health Department has given a deadline to claim the corpses but required the Bureau of Corrections to send out a notice to their families one last time.
“When a prisoner dies, we reach out to their relatives, or if from the provinces, they inform the superintendents of each camp to inform the relatives. If we have not heard from them, then we mark each body and we ready them for burial,” prison health officer Clarence Salgado told.