According to the recent article in the Guardian, there are thousands of people and hundreds of families living next to graves in Manila’s North graveyard called the Navotas cemetery. It is the oldest and largest cemetery in the city, and the home of 6000 people and one million death.
People live on top of graves, which are apartment-style tombs or inside mausoleums.
There are no any public infrastructure such as clean running water, sanitary or schools. You might be asking why you need a school in a cemetery? The answer is quite shocking. The Navotas cemetery is home of people of all ages, from babies to old and between. There are living hundreds of families, including children. The residents appealed to the mayor for a school, washroom facilities and a church, but nothing happened.
80-100 funerals are kept daily, offering some of inhabitants related work, such as maintain the graves, work as masons and carving headstones, but many are unemployed.
There are obviously health related problems as living conditions are well below acceptable. Furthermore, the residents remain targets for extra-judicial police operations. “…They are shooting and killing us inside the cemetery.” Says, Bahacan, who lives in a shanty located at the top of the grave of her son.
