Translated material
Deadly number
Moscow officials will count all the dead
The city authorities, who have been trying for several years to regain control over the delicate but profitable sphere of funeral services , seem to have finally found a way to rid city hall-friendly services from competition with the annoying agents of private funeral bureaus. Yesterday, the Moscow government approved the idea of the head of the city’s consumer market and services department, Vladimir Malyshkov, to create a Central City Dispatch Service for Ritual Services to the Population and introduce an electronic burial passport at all city cemeteries.According to Mr. Malyshkov, with the help of a new comprehensive system for recording dead bodies and burial sites, officials hope to quickly receive data on all deaths and protect this information from disclosure. It is expected that the innovation will significantly expand the capabilities of the already existing unified automated system of the funeral industry “Ritual”, linking information from the city’s ambulance and emergency medical stations, the “Disaster Medicine” system and the capital’s duty units into one database. It is the central dispatch service, as Mr. Malyshkov explained to Vremya Novostey, that will assign an identification number to the deceased, which will be entered into a special electronic burial passport and will be necessary when accepting orders for organizing a funeral.
Officials do not hide that the main goal of the innovations is to limit access to information about the death of citizens for funeral homes not under the control of the mayor's office. According to the Department of Consumer Market and Services, there are now about 20 specialized funeral services in Moscow, including those reorganized from former city state unitary enterprises into joint-stock companies. All of them have a city share in their authorized capital. Such an organization of the market, according to Mr. Malyshkov, made it possible, after the licensing of the funeral services sector was abolished in 2001, to “restrain the flow of fly-by-night companies that poured into this legal vacuum.”
Most of the funeral parlors controlled by the city are located in medical institutions, morgues and other similar organizations, which allows them to literally and figuratively “keep a finger on the pulse” of Muscovites who are dying. “Such interaction should be preserved, as it makes it possible to control ritual activities,” says Sergei Polyakov, deputy of the city health department. However, officials and representatives of the funeral business loyal to the mayor's office complain that deaths at home still do not fall under their control, and the relatives of the deceased in a stressful state may fall under the influence of unscrupulous agents. “Today there are five to ten agents on duty at the bedside of the deceased, we don’t need such concentration,” said Vladimir Malyshkov, noting that information about the dead is the subject of purchase and sale, and the price for it today reaches 5 thousand rubles. According to his calculations, 30% of the total volume of funeral services, or about 30 thousand orders per year, comes from “companies that do not pay taxes and impose prices, taking advantage of the psychological state of relatives.” According to the general director of OJSC Ritual-Gorbrus, Marina Godun, in parallel with authorized funeral services, more than 50 funeral homes operate in Moscow. Creating a unified database and assigning an identification number to the deceased will, in her opinion, make it possible to track which organization accepted and placed the order, where and by whom the person was buried.
In addition, in conditions of an acute shortage of land for cemeteries, the so-called burial passport will make it possible to keep a clear record of all graves and identify ownerless ones. Thus, according to Vladimir Malyshkov, out of 71 cemeteries in the city, only one now provides new graves. On the territory of the remaining churchyards, as a rule, additional burials of family crypts are carried out. Moreover, after the first burial, the grave can be reused only after 13 years. It is expected that the electronic system for registering the dead and graves should be operational next year.
Moscow deputies also agreed that this “delicate sphere should be completely controlled by the city authorities.” However, the Moscow City Duma believes that it is impossible to do without changes in federal legislation. “We are ready to support the legislative initiative on criminal liability for disclosing information about the death of a person that is purely professional,” said Andrei Metelsky, leader of the United Russia faction in the Moscow City Duma.
However, the head of the complex of economic policy and city development, Yuri Roslyak, who chaired a meeting of the Moscow government on the occasion of the mayor’s business trip, said that it would be unpleasant if such a serious document caused protests from the Federal Antimonopoly Service. “It is necessary to work with the FAS, to find a legal formulation that will allow us to limit “black” gravediggers,” he recommended. In addition, in his opinion, it is necessary to take a less formal approach to such a delicate matter as issuing an electronic burial passport and assigning an identification number to the deceased. “It is necessary to save personal data, such as first name, patronymic and last name, and not just a dry number that cannot be used when contacting relatives,” says Mr. Roslyak.