Lilongwe City Council opts for excavator for digging of graves

As Area 18 cemetery in Lilongwe is facing unprecedented demand for burials mainly due to Covid-19 related deaths, Lilongwe City Council had pleaded for a help of excavators to be used in digging graves in advance.

The Council says their manual based grave digging can no longer cope despite increasing number of staff at the cemetery.

“We know that we now need to do things differently as funerals are having to wait for a long time to be assisted,” said the Council’s chief executive officer, John Chome in a statement.

“We need a mechanical excavator to dig the graves as we plan to dig a sizable number in advance at a time— say 100 graves at a time and monitor their usage until these are replenished again.

“We, therefore, write to request if any member of the business community may be in a position to provide the City Council with the services of an excavator.

“On its part, the City Council will meet all operational costs — fuel and operator allowances. Kindly do let me know the possibility of this arrangement,” pleaded Chome.

Earlier Chome had made a public statement that the COVID-19 death surge was causing delay to bury dead bodies at the Lilongwe Area 18 cemetery —  threatening to overwhelm the diggers capacity.

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