2023-10-30 09:27:00
“The price of municipal taxes has fortunately not increased since 2020, unlike the cost of materials which has exploded. The price of certain items has doubled. This is the case for funerary monuments. Not to mention the price of wood which has increased enormously,” he explains.
Added to this is the increase in salaries due to indexation which further inflates the bills.
A more ecological method of burial is emerging in Belgium
“It’s a real concern for bereaved families. One of the first questions they ask is the price. We give them a detailed estimate. But you have to know that we have fixed costs, not everything goes in our pocket. We have to pay for the coffins, the hearse, the pallbearers, etc. Everything has a cost. The price of obituaries has also increased significantly,” he explains.
For a “basic” burial in land provided free of charge by the municipality and in a simple coffin, it costs 2,500 euros. But on average, families pay 5,000 euros.
“Despite the increase in the price of materials, the most expensive remains labor,” he explains. Moreover, funeral directors are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit workers. “We are still looking, we are really having a hard time recruiting, to believe that the motivation is no longer there. The reform of flexijobs should help us a little,” he hopes.
The funeral director refuses to reduce his profession to its commercial dimension.
“In my job, the most complicated thing is not contact with the dead, it’s contact with the living”
“When some families come to you, they only see the commercial aspect. But for us, what matters is customer service. The best thing anyone can say to us is ‘thanks to the ceremony , we are at peace. You helped us get through a difficult time. There is a commercial side to our job of course, but also human. We are not here to cry with the families but we are of course sensitive to their pain. And then, what I like regarding this job is the adrenaline. We constantly have to solve small and big problems: a problem on the road, traffic jams, managing the music… Our job is brings us closer and closer to events: we have to manage the ceremonies down to the smallest detail, this involves putting photos that are upside down in the files right side up, downloading music for families… We really has to do everything, the design of the invitations, the printing, master of ceremonies. We have all the hats.”
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