The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Increased funeral attendance at churches will not produce a major boost for funeral homes, it was revealed yesterday.

Kirsch Ferguson, the Bahamas Funeral Directors Association’s president, told Tribune Business that while COVID-19 restrictions remain a “burden” for grieving families “any relaxation helps”.

He spoke out after the Ministry of Health and Wellness issued new COVID-19 guidelines that further eased restrictions on funeral services at churches or places of religious worship. However, on New Providence and Grand Bahama, attendance at services must be limited to 50 percent of the facility’s capacity - an increase from the previously-allowed 33 percent.

And graveside funerals may be held on all islands without restrictions provided that all attendees and officiants adhere to COVID-19 protocols that are in force.

Mr Ferguson said: “Sometimes these funerals are rather large, so having limited seating takes away from families being able to have a proper grieving process and being visually able to look at the deceased person and participate in a service.

“But families are understanding at this point because right now, for the past two years, we’ve been going through this and it has been a struggle from the onset. Any increase in the percentage is better, just so people could have a feeling that we are getting back to some normalcy, but people understand what they are engaged with in this pandemic.”

Funeral homes have been trying for almost two years to maintain the balance between profitability and services, with Mr Ferguson saying: “The revenue for funeral homes is strictly our professional services. Second to that would be the merchandise we sell, whether it be the caskets or the urns, but primarily it is our professional services.

“So regardless of what is being mandated by the Government, persons will still have to be buried and families still have to be cared for, and they will need our services.

“So those are two things that we focus on, but with this dynamic and the challenges we’ve been having as a whole, merchandise has been one of the things that we had to consider in terms of scaling back our profit margin just to accommodate families because of the financial distress people find themselves in.”

Besides the caskets and urns, items such as funeral booklets and limousines are considered “disbursements” by the funeral homes and are merely passed through to other service providers despite them being shown on the final billing for clients. “We get zero profit from booklets and limousines,” Mr Ferguson said.