Funeral parlor expansion plans will make Taipei’s funerals more environmentally friendly, the city’s Department of Civil Affairs said on Wednesday.
As Taipei’s population ages, increased death rates have put pressure on the city’s two funeral parlors, the department said.
The parlors are used for both funeral rites and cremations. Department statistics show that usage increased 12 percent between 2012 and last year.
Work is in progress to renovate and expand the parlors, increasing the city’s capacity by 50 percent in 2016, the department said.
On Wednesday, the department opened the first set of renovated rooms, showcasing new features that would make funerals more environmentally friendly.
The new rooms feature electronic displays which families can use in place of traditional funeral scrolls and placards. Because traditional scrolls and placards are burned after funeral rites, the new displays are to reduce pollution emitted by the facilities, said Huang Wen-ting (黃雯婷), head of the department’s burial management division.
Family members would also no longer be required to provide curtains, carpets and chair covers for funeral rites, further reducing the time and expense needed to arrange the rooms, the department said.
The department declined to comment whether the reduced time needed to prepare the rooms would allow for increased usage, but estimated that families using the new rooms would be able to cut funeral expenses by almost two-thirds, to between NT$10,000 and NT$20,000.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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