Just a little down the road, Orchard Residences – a fancy private condominium built above the ION Orchard mall – is also built on what used to be Teochew grave sites. Ngee Ann City, a major mall on Singapore’s main shopping belt, sits on what was formerly the largest Teochew cemetery on the island. Now the gleaming mall generates revenue for Ngee Ann Kongsi, a charitable organisation for the Chinese Teochew community, allowing them to fund programmes in education. Ngee Ann City, a looming brown building that’s home to a major department store and up-market boutiques, marks the location of what used to be the largest Teochew community cemetery on the island. The first public housing flats will go on sale this September.Įven the city’s main shopping belt, Orchard Road, is built on a former graveyard that was dug up. In its place, the government is building a new town, complete with an underground, air-conditioned bus interchange and the city’s first underground service reservoir. Many notable people were buried there, including Augustine Podmore Williams, an English mariner on the SS Jeddah, whose story inspired Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.īidadari Cemetery was cleared between 20, in an operation that exhumed 58,000 Christian and 68,000 Muslim graves. Prime among them was Bidadari cemetery, which served Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sinhalese communities. Since then, dozens of cemeteries have been lost. Minister EW Barker told parliament that “over the next few years, all private cemeteries… which have been closed for burials, will be acquired as and when required for development.” Many were already facing clearance even then. In 1978, there were 213 burial grounds on 2,146 hectares in Singapore, or about 3.7% of the island. The bulk of Bukit Brown Cemetery will only be developed in the longer term.” In a statement, an MND spokesperson said: “The government needs to prioritise the use of our land for various needs such as housing, green spaces, utilities, transportation, ports and airports and amenities to support the functions of a nation. The country’s political leaders have often cited the challenge of balancing competing urban interests. The NEA said they did not know about any future plans for the area.īidadari housing development was built over one of Singapore’s oldest cemeteries, with 140,000 graves exhumed. Relatives have been asked to claim the remains of family members before the end of July next year. Next to be exhumed in Chua Chu Kang is part of the Chinese section, with graves buried between 1947 to 1975. (In Hong Kong, another similarly sized city, the problem is even worse: urns filled with ashes often sit in funeral parlours for months while waiting for the next available spot at a public columbarium, and the maximum burial period is just six years.) Under the New Burial Policy of 1998, you can lease a plot only for a maximum of 15 years. But, as with most things in the city-state, there’s an expiry date. Only one cemetery is still open for burial at all: for between S$315 to S$940 (£146 to £435) per adult, you can be buried at Chua Chu Kang cemetery, in a less developed part of western Singapore. Relatives can then visit their ancestors at the shared plots or at various columbaria. The exhumed remains are either reinterred in smaller plots, or cremated, according to the National Environment Agency (NEA). Photograph: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty The whole cemetery culture is already gone Darren KohĪuthorities say digging up Bukit Brown for the road will ease congestion from the Pan-Island Expressway, the first step towards further development of the area: the Ministry of National Development (MND) is considering converting all of Bukit Brown into housing by 2030. Private homes encroaching on grave sites at Bukit Brown cemetery.
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