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Crammed Jakarta pushes the dead to share space
At least 16 public cemeteries in Jakarta no longer open new burial plots. Instead, the cemeteries only bury on existing plots.
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Karet Bivak public cemetery in Central Jakarta. To save space, dense cemeteries such as Karet Bivak only receive new burials on top of existing burial plots. (JP/Rainier Nathaniel)
In Indonesia’s crammed capital city Jakarta, space is a luxury, including for the dead.
As a lack of available land in the city’s 661-square-kilometer area has restricted development for city accommodation for the living, a similar problem has also affected those who have died.
Of Jakarta’s 84 public cemeteries, at least 16 could no longer open new burial plots, according to the head of the funeral service unit at the Jakarta Forestry Agency, Ricky Putra. The 16 public cemeteries are located in Central Jakarta, East Jakarta and West Jakarta. The policy was taken as the cemeteries were overcrowded and located in densely packed residential areas and business centers.
The cemeteries, however, still accept burials by burying the newer dead bodies on top of the older plots. The agency, which oversees cemeteries in the city, allows new dead bodies to be stacked on plots that are more than three years old.
One of the crowded cemeteries is the Karet Bivak public cemetery in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta. With an area of 16.2 hectares, there are around 100,000 people buried in the cemetery’s 46,642 burial plots.
Karet Bivak management head Saiman said the cemetery had started stacking bodies in the old plots in 2017 due to very limited space amid requests from residents to have their family members buried there.
“Stacking made it possible for new burials on the existing plots,” Saiman told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
