President of the Funeral Practitioners Association, Keith Belgrove. Photo: Trinidad Express

President of the Funeral Practitioners Association, Keith Belgrove, told Guardian Media that while the site is a partnership between the Ministry of Health and the association, the group will be the ones managing it. He said the site will begin operations come January 1.

“The location is in Freeport and what we are doing there is preparing a warehouse that we can accommodate at least, 200 persons there and it can be easily expanded to take up to 300 persons,” he said.

“That will be adequate for the needs in Trinidad so all COVID (deaths will be stored there) until families are ready for funeral purposes.”

He said the warehouse will use refrigerated containers to store the bodies.

“One of the things we bring to it is that we bring a level of dignity to how we handling (the bodies) because you can imagine that because there’s insufficient refrigeration capacity for the situation we have found ourselves in not everybody is handed over to their families in the best condition. Now we assure families that they’d always be handed over in the best condition,” he said.

He said the facility will relieve the burden off of the Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) and funeral homes.

In recent weeks the morgues and funeral homes across the nation began running out of space to keep the bodies of the deceased.

Belgrove said the facility will not be accessible to the public but only to funeral homes.

“The public will not be invited to that facility. We will invite the public to select their funeral homes and their funeral home would come to receive the person,” he said.

He believes that this increased, direct interaction with funeral homes will also allow the association to ensure that the guidelines for handling the deceased set out by the Ministry of Health are strictly adhered to.

“Many funeral homes do not conform to those guidelines. Under this arrangement, because we’ll be working so closely with funeral homes we look forward to many more funeral homes following the guidelines to help keep the country safe in this pandemic,’ he said.