Six hundred graves and their surroundings were tidied up by the homeless employed by Dekert Nonprofit Kft. In the 33-year public plot of Debrecen Public Cemetery within the framework of the value-creating Start Sample Program supported by the government over the past year.
Diána Széles, Deputy Mayor of Debrecen and Tamás Pethe, Managing Director of Dekert Nonprofit Kft., reported on the works on March 2, 2021.
As Diána Széles said, a total of more than 1,600 deceased people who did not have relatives or could not take care of their burial rest in the public plot, so the municipality of Debrecen had to undertake it – for the most part or in full. Among them are some who are not residents of Debrecen, but who have died in the city’s jurisdiction, such as the hospitals here.
The local government spends a total of about HUF 25 million a year on public funerals – in all cases coffins. Now the municipality has also undertaken to restore the graves of those buried at public expense – in the spirit of the idea of a caring city, which includes not only the living but also the dead -. All six hundred tombstones were given new, uniform headstones and tomb frames. The deputy mayor stressed that the municipality would like to continue this work in order to keep all the graves in the public parcel tidy. In addition to the tidying up of the graves, Dekert Nonprofit Kft. Also produced 4,000 sidewalks in the framework of the sample program that took place in the past year, which the residents of the city could request for sidewalk construction purposes.
Tamás Pethe, the managing director of Dekert Nonprofit Kft., said that first the cleaning was done in the public plot, then the uniform headstones and grave frames were made and placed.
The grave frames were filled with arable land in which spring flowers (daffodils, tulips), as well as various perennials (belfry, verbena, ajuga, plantain), were planted, so in the following years, this plot of the cemetery will become more and more flowering. Within the framework of the Start Sample Program tender, the government subsidized the cost of purchasing wood, paints, tools, arable land and planted plants with HUF 6,754,532. The municipality of Debrecen supplemented this amount with HUF 510,934 in its own funds.
Photo: János Miskolczi
