Land Crisis For COVID-19 Graves, Rorotan TPU Will Be Used Immediately

Illustration - An aerial funeral (Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The plan to use the special burial ground for the COVID-19 corpse at Rorotan TPU, Cilincing, North Jakarta shows a bright spot after waiting for land clearing work for three months.

Deputy Governor of DKI Jakarta, Ahmad Riza Patria, said that the COVID-19 burial ground in the Rorotan Cemetery will be usable this month. However, Riza could not confirm the date the land was used.

"We have prepared TPU Rorotan, God willing, this month it can be used. So, don't worry," Riza told reporters, Tuesday, January 5.

The preparation for the burial site at Rorotan Cemetery began on 17 September 2020. There are 25 hectares of vacant land. However, the DKI Jakarta Provincial Government will only use 2 hectares of land.

Later, there will be 1,500 grave plots that can be accommodated in Rorotan TPU. "There are stages. The first is 1,500 plots. The second stage will be added according to progress and readiness," said Riza.

Rorotan is a lowland area close to the sea in North Jakarta. The land purchased by the DKI Provincial Government is a former rice field area. So, the soil structure is still wet.

This is what makes the DKI Pemprov take a long time to finalize the TPU Rorotan grave area, so that it will only be used when DKI has experienced a COVID-19 burial land crisis.

The capital of the COVID-19 grave crisis

DKI has two special burial sites for the bodies of COVID-19, namely TPU Pondok Ranggon, East Jakarta and TPU Tegal Alur, West Jakarta, which are currently experiencing an empty land crisis.

Pondok Ranggon TPU has a capacity of more than 4,700 plots. Since November 2020, the burial ground for Muslim body blocks at Pondok Ranggon TPU has no room for new graves anymore.

Meanwhile, for non-Muslim burial blocks, all land in the TPU which has a total area of 1.6 hectares has also been full as of December 22.

Now, if a body is to be buried, the Pondok Ranggon TPU manager will bury the body using an overlapping system. It was recorded that more than 152 bodies had just been buried while boarding the previous ones.

The overlapping burial was carried out on the existing bodies of the buried or known families. This is because the main requirement for an overlapping funeral is to have permission from the heirs of the body being boarded.

If you do not have a family or a known body, you will look for it to another cemetery that buries the body of a family with the new body.

Another special grave area for COVID-19 is in TPU Tegal Alur. As many as 4,316 of the total capacity of 5,000 tombs have been used as of Saturday, December 2, 2021.