Cemeteries in Accra full

The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) is finding it difficult to get new burial sites for the dead, an official has said.

Almost all the major cemeteries in the country’s capital are full, according to Dr Simpson Anim-Boateng, the Assembly’s Director of Public Health.

Speaking to TV3’s Portia Gabor in Accra on Tuesday, September 9, Dr Anim-Boateng disclosed that what the AMA has resorted to doing is to conduct burials in-between graves.

“We are using old, unmarked graves,” he stated, adding that other dead bodies are buried on top of old ones without exhumation.

Attempts by the Assembly to get new cemeteries have proven futile, Dr Anim-Boateng, disclosed on TV3’s News @10.

He said the Assembly earmarked a place beyond Kasoa in the Central Region but “the chiefs were demanding too much."

Another between the Kotoka International Airport and the Christian Action Faith International Church was also rejected as authorities adduced aviation gadgets had been buried there.

He said the AMA will soon ban the construction of tombstones at cemeteries in order to save space while families will be cajoled to cremate bodies.

Dr Anim-Boateng also hinted that the municipality’s biggest cemetery, Awudome Cemetery, will be reused.