Govt, funeral homes agree emergency measures to clear burial backlog

Grieving families should see faster access to burial and cremation warrants after the government and funeral directors agreed on emergency measures to clear a backlog of bodies awaiting release, officials have confirmed.

Minister of Legal Affairs and Criminal Justice Michael Lashley and Attorney General Wilfred Abrahams met with Ian Griffith, president of the Barbados Association of Funeral Directors, on Monday morning to address ongoing delays at the Coroner’s Office and bottlenecks in issuing essential death documentation.

After the meeting, Lashley told Barbados TODAY the discussions were productive and confirmed that technical issues and administrative delays were being tackled immediately.

“We’ve come with some short-term solutions, and we’ve established a working group that will deal with the matters in the long term,” Lashley said. “There were matters of networking issues in terms of technology. We have actually met the persons who are responsible, and hopefully by tomorrow morning we should have some of those matters resolved.”

As part of the immediate intervention, the government is setting up a designated processing hub to bypass recent network failures.

“We would have a dedicated desk dealing with the matter. Of course, the networking issue in the Forde and Simmons Complex so that person will be moved over to the Registry so that we can have the documentation dealt with in a safe manner,” Lashley said. “The short-term solution is to work on the delays and get rid of the backlog.”

The minister noted that manual processing systems were deployed last week alongside the acting coroner to process pending documents, adding that he and the attorney general remain fully committed to ending the delays.

Funeral directors welcomed the intervention following weeks of growing frustration over delayed services. While exact figures were unavailable, industry officials reported widespread impact across funeral homes, with some families experiencing delays of several weeks and at least one or two services being postponed.

Griffith voiced optimism that the agreed measures would offer immediate relief to grieving families and prevent similar crises in the future.

“I believe that we should start to see some relative ease,” he said. “As long as what came up in the meeting is put in place, we should have some signs of ease, and going forward for the future, there should be further developments so that we are not back in this position.”

The funeral director pointed out that recent technical glitches reported by the Coroner’s Office exposed deeper, systemic flaws within the death handling process that require modernised standards and legal reform.

“Funeral directors want to see a complete system of protocols and management for the handling of human remains, right from the time of death at home or in a facility, through to the transfer to the funeral home.

“It is hoped that eventually we can see changes to the legislation, because it has been there for quite a number of years and is actually very outdated. We are looking to revamp the whole process and make it more efficient so that going forward we wouldn’t have such issues.”

The newly established joint working group is expected to begin reviewing broader legislative reforms and permanent operational protocols in the coming weeks.