More needy seniors signing up for free funeral services

SINGAPORE — For more than two decades, 83-year-old Ho Kwai Yeng did not dare to ask people for help even though she was worried about having enough money to pay for her own funeral arrangements.

So it came as a relief when she signed up for Nam Hong Welfare Service Society’s free funeral service, which will take care of this need when she dies.

The former seamstress, who is single, told TODAY in Mandarin: “When you live till this age, you don’t worry about talking about death, but other people may find it pantang (a taboo) to talk about such things.

“We’ll die sooner or later; it’s very difficult to say when we’ll go. One day we may have a fall or choke on food.”

Mdm Ho lives in Yishun with her 87-year-old sister, also single, in a studio apartment for senior citizens. And more seniors like her are starting to think about their own funeral arrangements, with more organisations, offering them free services too, especially for the destitute.

Apart from finding it difficult to save up for funeral needs, Mdm Ho was also concerned that her siblings and their children would not be able to make the appropriate arrangements given their different religions.

The service by Nam Hong was started by the organisation two years ago. It provides free funeral services to needy seniors — from collecting the bodies to the cremation before scattering the ashes in the sea.

Based on the individual’s religion, it will also include the appropriate religious prayers and rituals.

Nam Hong general manager Aaron Ng said that the society’s members realised from their house-visits that many of the low-income seniors — some living alone — were bothered by how they may not get proper funeral rites and rituals when they die.

“For these elderly, by and large, they’re rather superstitious,” Mr Ng said. “They’re concerned about their spiritual status when they pass on because there is nobody to take care of it or conduct ceremonies and they’ll become ‘wandering souls’.”

Demand for these free funeral services has exceeded what Nam Hong could provide.

More than 100 enquiries were made, even though the funds raised could just cover the funeral arrangements for some 70 seniors aged 65 and above, who have a gross household income of less than S$1,800 a month.

To date, five have died and Nam Hong has extended the service to them. Working with the Woodlands grassroots team, the organisation has just raised another sum of money that can cover the funeral arrangements of some 40 elderly living in the area.

Free funeral arrangements are also provided by Cheng Hong Welfare Service Society’s Afterlife Memorial Service, an initiative that its founder Lim Hang Chung has been running since 2012. The cost of each funeral it holds ranges between S$1,000 and S$3,000.

For Mr Lim, it was his encounters with two individuals that moved him to start this service. One was an elderly bachelor who had asked Mr Lim to handle his funeral rites because he could not afford it and had no next of kin.

The man died after he had a second fall following his discharge from the hospital. His body was discovered two days after his death.

Mr Lim also helped a father with his 10-year-old son’s funeral after the man spent all his savings on his son’s medical bills.

“Even before these two cases, I often hear about the elderly dying alone at home and I pitied them,” Mr Lim said in Mandarin. “After that, I discussed this with my (colleague) and decided to start (the service).”

Since then, the team has handled the funeral arrangements of some 100 people, sometimes referred to them by social workers, the police, or senior activity centres.

About 240 seniors in need have also signed consent forms to have the society take care of their funeral arrangements later down the road.

The Singapore Casket and Direct Funeral Services are also among the few service providers who arrange funerals for the destitute at no charge.

The former has covered the costs of such funeral services for some 40 to 50 people a year, while the latter does the same for about three to five individuals each month.

When asked if the authorities should step in to cover the funeral costs for these people, Mr Lim, a recent winner of the President’s Volunteerism and Philanthropy Awards, said: “This will cost the Government too much.

“This is something organisations like ours should do, because we have volunteers and donors to help handle and cover the costs for such funeral arrangements.”

To get seniors to be more open in talking about death, Mr Lim said that Cheng Hong Welfare Service Society would organise talks with senior activity centres and social service offices as well as during its own events.

However, Mr Ng disagreed that the older generation considers this a taboo topic. “When you talk to them, they’ll (tell you), ‘This is very nice, thank you very much’. They welcome such (services),” he said.

This is the case for some 20 older residents living in rental flats on Merpati Road who had their funeral portraits taken by a professional photographer some months back.

The Tan Chin Tuan Foundation and Care Community Services Society offered to do this after some of the seniors had flagged this as their “unlikely wish”, the foundation said.

One of them was Mdm Kek Guat Beng, 74, who started to think about her own funeral arrangements after she helped a friend to collect a funeral portrait she took at a studio.

Mdm Soon Chain Sun, 66, was another resident who took up the offer to have her photos taken.

“(My neighbours) told me, ‘These photos are for you to put on the (funeral) lorry, so pantang!’ ... But I’m not pantang. Everyone has to walk this path; there’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said.

Apart from these groups, organisations such as the Muslim Trust Fund Association and the Singapore Kadayanallur Muslim League Funeral Services also offer free burial and funeral services, for instance.