TRIBUTES PAID TO TEMPLE PRESIDENT

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Tributes paid to temple president

by Peter Warzynski

One of the country's longest-running Sikh temple presidents has died while on holiday in India.

Omparkash Chand, 63, was in the Punjab visiting family and buying religious ornaments for the Shri Guru Ravidass Gurdwara, in Harrison Road, Leicester – where he had been president since 1997.

Colleagues said they believed he may have been the longest-serving head of a Sikh temple in the world.

Mr Chand died in his sleep on June 7 and was brought back to Leicester last Saturday.

However, a post-mortem examination could not determine a cause of death.

Tributes have poured in for the community leader, who lived in Scraptoft with his wife and son. Mr Chand's brother, Kamaljit Mahi, 53, said the family was shocked at the sudden death of the temple president.

"The post-mortem couldn't find a cause of death, but they've taken some tissue samples to see if they can determine what happened.
"It's a big shock and across the family we're all trying to help each other," he said.

"He was a good-natured person and will be sadly missed, not just by the Sikh community – but by Christians and Hindus. He did a lot of work with other people."

Friend and fellow temple member Dev Diwana said: "We believe he is the longest consecutive running president of a Sikh temple in the UK, if not the world.

"That's one of the most impressive things about him. He served the Sikh community with an open heart and he was a great man – he was a picture of calm.

"He'd only been in India for a few days before he died, but he had no health issues which anyone knew of."

Surinderpal Singh Rai, of Leicestershire Council of Gurdwaras, said: "Omprakash Chand was a very dear friend of mine.

"He tirelessly served the Sikh community for well over 40 years and the newly-built Shri Guru Ravidass Gurdwara is a testimony to this.

"He will be dearly missed."

Mr Chand's funeral is tomorrow.

His body will arrive at the Shri Guru Ravidass Gurdwara, at 11.15am, before leaving for Gilroes Cemetery at 11.45am.

It will arrive at the cemetery, in Groby Road, at about 12.15pm.

CEMETERY EXTENSION AS BURIAL PLOTS RUNNING OUT

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Cemetery extension as burial plots running out

A cemetery will be extended to help prevent a burial crisis in the city.Some 1,000 new plots will be created at Saffron Hill Cemetery by Leicester City Council as part of a £450,000 extension.

The city is rapidly running out of burial space and the move will create enough space at the cemetery for the next 10 years.

Adrian Russell, the council's director of environmental services, backed the extension.

He said: "As everyone knows, our cemeteries are quickly filling up and we're running out of burial space in the city.

"This extension, on land already owned by the council, will allow the cemetery to continue operating for another decade.

"It's a relatively short-term solution, but, later in the year, we'll be examining the options open to us to deal with the issue in the much longer term."

Councillors have previously floated the idea of creating a new graveyard outside the city boundary, because of the lack of suitable land within the city boundaries.

Tony Donovan, executive director of Age UK in Leicestershire, said: "The extension is good news because so many people who were born and raised in Leicester want to be buried here in the city and not outside in the county somewhere.

"Having burial sites within the city makes it easier for local people to visit the graves of loved ones.

"If new sites were created out in the county, it would mean longer journeys by public transport for many visitors, who are often older people."

Saffron Hill cemetery is Leicester's second-largest burial site and serves the south of the city.

It has a general burial area for traditional lawn graves, a small Polish burial area, a children's section and a Muslim cemetery with prayer house.

The cost of the extension includes landscaping, roads, drainage and paving.

Kenny Hill, 62, from New Parks, said: "When you've grown-up in a city you want to be buried there when you die, but if the space runs out then I'd have to get buried somewhere else and I don't think I'd like that idea.

"I think it's good news the cemetery is being extended."

Margaret Sinton, 70, from Spinney Hills, said: "It's great that they're extending the cemetery but there are more old people around than ever before so what is a problem now will eventually become a crisis."

The city's main burial site – Gilroes Cemetery – was recently extended across eight acres of farmland.

The other two sites in the city are Belgrave Cemetery and Welford Road cemetery.

The work at Saffron Hill will be completed within two years.

MEETING AT GILROES CEMETERY

The Council of Faiths is involved in a meeting at Gilroes Cemetery and Crematorium, Groby Road, this afternoon, This is the latest in a quarterly programme of meetings involving City Council officers, cemetery and crematorium staff and city and county undertakers, discussing issues related to Leicester City Council's Bereavement Services.

While this is the first of these meetings in which we've taken part, we should look forward to being a regular participant from now on. In opening the meeting, Richard Welburn, Head of Bereavement Services at Leicester City Council, says that, given the diversity of Leicester, it is wholly appropriate, indeed essential, that the Council of Faiths should take part in these meetings. Leicester City Council wants to provide service relevant, appropriate and acceptable to the families and communities of Leicester and Leicestershire.

Minou Cortazzi is also here, representing the Council of Faiths Board of Directors. She also has an interest in this matter from the perspective of the Bahá'í community - on of those religions for whom burial of the dead is mandatory.

Today we learn that total burial space in the city will be used up in 40 years time (although space allocated to different faith communities is being used up at different rates). As part of its Burial Land Strategy (part of a set of 21 recommendations included at end of two-year long review of Bereavement Services) Leicester City Council is considering a number of options, but it is a long way from committing to any of them, given the sensitivity of the issue. These options include:

• opening up new spaces (e.g. by infilling space between graves and paths; grassing over paths) thereby extend the life of the existing cemetery;
• establishing a new cemetery which may incorporate natural burials (if a new cemetery is opened up while existing ones remains operational, this will extend the life of the existing ones);
• reuse of existing graves (changing terms of use of leasing land to families).

Latest plans for the crematorium expansion project (due to run from September this year until December 2012) were displayed, explained and discussed today. We were told that the current ratio of cremation to burial is 70:30.

These developments, in which the burial and cremation needs of the city a hundred years from now have to be taken into consideration, will necessarily have an impact on fees and charges made to users now and in the future. Any such impact has to be seen as fair, equitable and reasonable. Leicester City Council wishes to be transparent in making and justifying any such decisions (which is part of the reason for involving organisations like ours in consultation).

The next meeting of this kind should take place in September this year, before work on the crematorium extension begins.

A surreal episode: in a brief moment behind the scenes, two members of staff are planning the music to be played in one of the upcoming funeral services. They're discussing the relative merits of two different edits of "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix.