Paid grave searches: Mykolaiv postpones increase in funeral service rates

The proposed increase in fees for services provided by Mykolaiv Municipal Funeral Service has not yet been approved. The Mykolaiv Executive Committee did not vote on the draft decision and sent it back for revision after discussing the company’s new services.

The municipal enterprise proposed adding the following services:

• burial of urns containing the ashes of the deceased following the establishment of a columbarium;
• paid searches for graves at citizens’ request;
• monitoring compliance with sanitary standards by businesses operating in city cemeteries under contracts with the funeral service.

Olena Bolichevska, head of the Tariff Policy Department, who presented the issue at the meeting, explained the need for the grave-search service. According to her, residents often contact the enterprise with information about a deceased person but do not know where they were buried.

Vitaliy Lukov, first deputy mayor of Mykolaiv, pointed out the need for exceptions for searches for military graves and memorials. He asked whether relatives and fellow service members of fallen soldiers would have to pay to find their graves.

The official proposed clarifying in the document that the service would apply to old graves—for example, those more than 30 or 50 years old. Olena Bolichevska confirmed that the service procedure was intended specifically for searching for old graves and agreed that the document could be revised to take the proposals into account.

The department head said the need to review the fees was mainly due to wage increases, changes to the industry agreement, and the cost of certain funeral services. These include:

• manual grave digging;
• mechanized grave digging;
• preparing plots for the burial of urns containing ashes.

Previously, we reported:

• Burials in Mykolaiv may become more expensive: grave digging could cost up to UAH 9,942
• A European approach reaches cemeteries: a columbarium opens in Mykolaiv for UAH 2.7 million
• No “permit,” no access to a grave: the Antimonopoly Committee investigates alleged abuses by Mykolaiv’s funeral service
• Burying “COVID victims” exclusively through “Mykolaiv Municipal Funeral Service” violated the law, says the Antimonopoly Committee