A hiccup in the registration process for cremations was the reason given for the temporary closure of the Caroni cremation site.

It led to hundreds of mourners being locked out on Wednesday morning.

Newsday understands the mourners, along with staff from three funeral homes, went to the site for their relatives' last rites, but were met with locked gates. They were told the cremations were not scheduled and had to be postponed.

Municipal police were called and local government officials spoke with mourners and staff at the site to organise a reopening.

Newsday spoke to chairman of the Tunapuna/ Piarco Regional Corporation (TPRC) Kwasi Robinson, who said there were issues with funeral homes which had failed to register their cremations on Wednesday, leading to confusion over how many services were scheduled for that day.

He said from his information, only one cremation was scheduled, but eight others were not recorded, leading to the pile-up.

He said the situation was unfortunate, but it was the responsibility of the funeral homes to go through the necessary channels and to obey the public health regulations.

"If we don't have the documents registered, there is no reason for us to open the gates.

[caption id="attachment_891893" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A family leaves the Caroni cremation site after performing last rites for their loved one. - SUREASH CHOLAI[/caption]

"The funeral homes know the proper procedure, but people want to do the wrong thing. Once the funeral home has the certification from the police authorising them to conduct the cremation, they go ahead without registering with the corporation – and that's not how it works.

"We have to have a record of who is being cremated there."

On rumours of an unofficial arrangement for cremations between one funeral home and a staff member at the cremation site, Robinson said he had taken note of the claims and an investigation was under way.

Robinson also said the cremation site was eventually reopened and most cremations were completed by the time he left the site just after 1 pm, under police supervision, to ensure public health regulations were observed.

He also said the corporation did its best to be accommodating and sensitive to the religious persuasions of all citizens.

"We in the regional corporation have a very open stakeholder-management policy, and the people who felt most disenfranchised would have been the relatives of the deceased. So I did my best to apologise to all of the families, because this was not their fault.

"However, we also have to put our foot down. We can't have seven cremations being done at the same time. The same thing we don't want at our beaches and playgrounds, we can't have it at a cremation site."

Newsday also spoke to Minister of Rural Development and Local Government Kazim Hosein, who also visited the site and agreed the responsibility fell on funeral homes to ensure cremations were registered with