This news should be place in the category “Macabre Christmas Presents”. Several hundreds residents of Paiania municipality in the Kilkis prefecture, North-EastE Greece, were shocked to receive bills with the indication “Entombment Right”. The municipality was asking them to pay a fee of 10 euro + 1% interest rate per month for 2011 and 2012, for the right to be buried at the local graveyard.
That’s what the residents understood.
Speaking to morning magazine of private Skai TV, a municipality official admitted that the ‘name’ of the fee was wrong and that the fee was raised for the maintenance of the graveyard. Furthermore, the man claimed that the bill will be sent only to the head of families registered in the municipality.
Odd enough is how to find out who is the head of one family and who is not…
A resident complained some time ago, that he, his mother and his sister have all received the bill of ‘entombment right fee’.
Residents got upset because the costs for maintenance of graveyards, that is cleaning and light, are traditionally included in the regular municipality fees. Fees that are normally paid through the electricity bills and thus one bill per household or better say “electricity subscriber”.
However in times of recession also in state funding, it seems as it’s the turn of municipalities to raise a ‘poll levy’ with whatever the official reason. Even if it’s 10 euro per year.
That’s a new malpractice in debt-ridden Greece: everyone wants to strip form us 10 euro here, 15 euro there, 5 euro here and there and nobody tells us where we will find the money to cover this additional expenses.
PS I suppose the next poll levy to be raised will be “Eternal Life Fee”.
