Handle with care

As the service provided is a sensitive and often difficult one, the BESA chooses its volunteers carefully to ensure they suit the job.

"Some people just can't deal with corpses," said vice-chairman Susan Lam Kwai-ha. "We don't take on every person who comes to us requesting to be a pre-need caretaker. We need to access their psychological status.

"If the volunteer is not emotionally stable and mature enough, dealing with the death of someone, whom he may have known for a while, may have an adverse impact on him."

One of the misconceptions about the service offered by the BESA is that it is like a coroner, which performs post-mortem examinations, she said, explaining: "We don't pick up bodies, we just identify them".

In Lam's opinion, death is the final destination on life's journey. "If people accept it as something natural, they will not focus on the sadness," she said. "We intend to let the elderly die peacefully, not regrettably."

Lam has had 15 years to train herself to be a "professional and rational" pre-need caretaker, a duty she first performed when a friend asked her to arrange a funeral of an elderly man who died in a car accident.

If a client receives a social security allowance from the Hong Kong government, the costs of their BESA-organized funeral - on average about HK$11,100 ($1,400) - will come out of the public purse. If not, bill is paid with money from an affiliated charitable fund.

However, Nip said the burial grant of about HK$10,000 provided by the city's social welfare department usually fails to cover all the necessary funeral expenses.

After deducting the cost of the death certificate (HK$140) and cremation (HK$1,300), the remainder is only enough for the basics, such as the coffin, shroud, quilt and transportation.

Money for other things, such as the funeral hall (HK$800) and a place in the government-run columbarium (HK$3,000) need to be covered by those providing the services.

A gray area also exists when dealing with relatively well-off elderly people not eligible for the social security allowance, who die without a will and have no one to leave their money to. In such cases, social welfare officials are not responsible for the funeral costs and the matter is passed to the food and environmental hygiene department.

"The administration should consider updating and fine-tuning the policy," suggested Nip.

"If a single elderly person dies, his or her funeral expenses should be taken up by the government, even if he or she doesn't receive the allowance," he said. "For deceased recipients of the allowance, the burial grant should be increased."