Funeral directors Eastaugh and Carroll have called for better support from council over the holiday period after council’s Christmas break led to grave problems at Mudgee cemetery.
Eastaugh and Carroll funeral directors John Hopkins and Peter Hannigan contacted council early in January to locate the plot reserved for a funeral in the first week of the year. A staff member on call from Parks and Gardens searched the computer system and gave out the location of the plot that came up under the name of the deceased party.
However, when council staff dug up the plot on the morning of the funeral, they found two coffins already buried at that location.
The staff member from parks and gardens, unaccustomed to using the computer program, had somehow found the wrong grave.
Mr Hopkins was told that he would be able to discuss it with someone when council reopened on January 7, but pointed out that he was not in a position to wait until then.
The family weren’t sure where the correct grave was located, and elected to choose a new grave.
Immediately before the funeral, Mr Hopkins received a call saying that the correct grave had been located, close to the deceased person’s brother.
He offered the family the option of removing the coffin to the right grave, which they declined.
Mr Hopkins said it was good that the family took it so well, but added, “It makes us look bad.”
“It shouldn’t happen,” Mr Hannigan said. “They should have had people in the office available to check this sort of data.”
Mr Hopkins argued that there was no reason for council to close for a full fortnight over the Christmas period.
“We worked all over Christmas and New Year and just about everybody else did too,” Mr Hannigan said.
Mr Hannigan and Mr Hopkins said they had heard other funeral directors had experienced the same sort of difficulties during council’s two-week break.
A similar problem arose during council’s holiday season last year, when field staff, working from an out-of-date cemetery map, allocated Eastaugh and Carroll a grave that had been reserved for somebody else since the map was printed.
“Warwick Bennett vowed and declared it would never happen again,” Mr Hopkins recalled.
Although council spokesman Ed DeLong suggested that “never” would have been a rash promise and was probably not the exact word used, council changed their system this year to give field staff access to the computer system.
Following the latest problems, council will have a senior customer service staff member on call on weekends and during holiday periods especially to deal with funeral bookings, hopefully avoiding further errors.
“That’s what we heard when it happened last year,” Mr Hopkins said.
General Manager Warwick Bennett has apologised to the daughter of the deceased person, and reported that she was satisfied with the way the situation had been resolved and believed her mother would have been as well.