1977 — Page 142

Page 142 of 174

Page 142 of 174

HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL

in operation in March 1978. The aim of the Urban Council in regard to funeral parlour services is "to provide a dignified and inexpensive funeral service for the public at the Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall". We are on the threshold of launching into a new field of service for the public. I have deliberately used the world "new" because it must be new in the sense that it must be tremendously different from the type of services we used to offer at the Hung Hom Funeral Depot which was designed for the Hong Kong public in a totally different age long before Hong Kong has taken off in its road of economic prosperity. The old Hung Hom Funeral Depot aimed at providing the barest minimum. What we must recognise today is that the services we are going to provide at the new Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall must not be a continuation of this type of attitude; instead the Urban Council must be business-like in the sense that we must provide, on a no-loss-no-gain basis (except to the extent that we should subsidise so as to promote cremation), the type of funeral services which are dignified enough to meet what the public need. Hence, it is important to bring out this subject so as to get our attitudes clear.

Before I set out to give my views on how the new Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall should be run, I should like to make two points by way of background information to enable us to see the issue in better perspective. The first point is that one of the hardships facing members of the bereaved family in a private funeral parlour is that they are faced with a situation in which dignity is equated to money. The current myth in private funeral parlours is that, other than the cost of the coffin itself, all the ancillary services are supposed to be provided free. Consequently, this means that the more expensive the coffin bought (and it is in the cost of coffins that funeral parlours have been able to make a real killing), the more dignified the funeral will be. This is holding members of the bereaved family to ransom. The second point which I wish to make by way of background information is that members of the bereaved family have to face a situation in which there is nowhere they could turn for sound and independent protocol advisory service for a funeral except to those who have an axe to grind, usually the agent for the selling of the coffin and its related services. Things such as what kind of Master of Ceremony one should hire, what kind of band for funeral music, what kind of reception arrange- ments for the funeral are usually done through a middleman. God knows whether he is always acting in the best interest of members of the bereaved family. It is not also beyond imagination that such a situation, with the bereaved familly literally held to ransom because there is nobody they could decently turn to for advice, makes it very

possible for corruption to take place in the form of unauthorized kick-backs to this middleman.

Recognizing these hardships facing members of the public, I submit that it is the duty of the Urban Council to help them to overcome these hardships. It is only through overcoming these hardships for them that we could say that we are really providing a dignified and inexpen- sive funeral service. I could envisage a situation in which, when the new Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall is launched in March 1978, there will be deliberate attempts on the part of vested interests to try to spread the idea that the Urban Council Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall is only meant for people who are too poor to provide a dignified funeral service for the dead. We must be on the watch-out for this. Indeed, before we launch the new funeral parlour into operation we must arrange things in such a way that, even when such an idea is maliciously spread, it would carry no weight with the public.

Turning now to the actual organization of a funeral itself, if we analyse it, we would be able to see that it, by and large, consists of the following elements:

(a) the purchase of a coffin;

(b) the actual organization of the funeral proceedings which con-

sist of in turn the following services:

(i) a Master of Ceremony,

(ii) background funeral music,

(iii) wreath and apothegm or epitaph arrangements to com-

memorate the dead,

(iv) reception arrangements for those attending the funeral;

and

(c) the actual burial service.

In my view, the Urban Council could and should leave (a) and (c) to undertakers who are hiring our new Hung Hom Public Funeral Hall. But in my view, the Urban Council must take a very positive interest in providing as much of the services as possible for those under category (b). Because if they are left to small-scale undertakers, the standard of such services must always be of a very low standard compared to that in private funeral parlours (I hasten to make the point that even in private funeral parlours the standard there is sometimes awful). And, should this turn out to be the case, the public would equate funeral services which take place in our Urban Council public funeral halls