Filipino Funeral Homes: Where The Dead Go To Die

Dying in the Philippines can be horrible but what happens after you die can be even worse. No, I'm not talking about being sent to hell for your sins, though that is very bad. I'm talking about the desecration of your corpse but hose entrusted to care for it. In Santa Cruz, Manila a funeral parlor was recently closed after a pile of decomposing bodies was found. 

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/metro/954299/manila-funeral-parlor-closed-due-to-pile-of-decomposing-bodies/story/

A funeral parlor in Santa Cruz, Manila was shut down on Wednesday after authorities found piles of decomposing cadavers inside its premises.  

According to Mark Salazar’s exclusive report in “24 Oras”, the Manila Sanitary Department and the Manila North Cemetery found that Body and Life Funeral Services does not have the necessary documentation to operate, including a sanitary permit. 

"They don’t have permits such as a sanitary permit or even an office permit," said Daniel Tan of Manila North Cemetery. 

Video from the Manila Sanitary Department showed that the small office of the funeral parlor also serves as the living room of the owner’s family. Just a few steps from the kitchen and dining space is the morgue where stacks of bodies were found piled at a corner. 

Footage showed a new cadaver that was about to be embalmed was just lying on a bed instead of being secured in a cold storage. 

"This is a health hazard because they are embalming the bodies inside. The space must be ventilated, the tiles are clean, there should be no foul odor, and bodies must be placed in a stainless steel container. That’s the proper way. The cadavers must also be inside a refrigerator," said Manila City District Sanitary Inspector Gilbert de Guzman. 

As a a result, authorities confiscated the 10 cadavers from the said funeral parlor and transferred them to other morgues. Personnel retrieving the bodies had to endure the foul smell while bringing out the remains, according to the report. 

However, the owner of the funeral parlor said they were never bothered by the smell coming from the bodies stacked inside their house. 

"I don’t think we smelled anything bad here. It didn’t reach where we were staying," said business owner Anjanette Bascuguin. 

Further, two of the 10 cadavers have already decomposed in formalin solution as they have been unrefrigerated since April, the report added. 

"We want to identify these bodies so we can reach out to their families. We also want to give them a proper burial. The City of Manila will shoulder whatever they need from burial, caskets, we will provide everything," said Tan. 

For her part, the owner of the funeral parlor admitted having problems with their permits. 

"The problem is the permit, especially for work," said Bascuguin. 

Funeral parlors can seek the pauper’s burial assistance from the Department of Social Welfare and Development for unclaimed bodies, the report said.  But the Manila North Cemetery warned that such action could be an example of sketchy operations of fly-by-night funeral parlors. 

"They don’t have the necessary permits. What we do so as not to inconvenience the families, was to allow them to view the body. But after the burial, we will hold the hearse until they provide the necessary documents. If they cannot provide the needed papers, they have to leave the hearse with us," said Tan. 

However, the funeral parlor denied that it was trying to avail of the DSWD’s burial assistance for the unclaimed bodies. 

The 10 bodies will be buried in the Manila North Cemetery, the report said.

No permits? How were they allowed to operate for so long without being noticed? One body has been rotting since April, 2025. Did the family not care enough to raise a complaint? There are a lot of questions here. However, what's not in question is that this is not the first time nor will it be the last time a Philippine funeral home has been shut down because of rotting corpses and lack of permits.

Here are just two instances, both from Quezon City.

https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/metro/537901/qc-shuts-down-5-funeral-homes-over-violations-in-sanitation-rules/story/

The Quezon City government has shut down five funeral homes for alleged violations of sanitation rules and regulations and operating without the necessary permits, a report on "24 Oras" said Tuesday.

The report said inspectors from the city health office found internal organs, buckets of bloods and even a fetus inside a jar in the embalming and dressing rooms of the funeral parlors.

Ordered closed were Urban, Cinco, RPL, Grace, and Villamor funeral homes over alleged violations of Presidential Decree 856 or The Code on Sanitation of the Philippines.

Chapter 21 of the decree states that embalmers must "ensure that no parts of the remains shall be removed during embalming," a rule the five funeral homes reportedly violated.

"Any part of the body ay hindi dapat nakatago [o] nasa kaldero. Dapat, inililibing 'yan," Dir. Ramon Matabang of the QC Civil Registrar Office said.

The five funeral homes also allegedly violated regulations on drainage and waste disposal, and disregarded the safety of its workers by allowing them to work without protective gear.

All of the funeral homes were also found operating without renewed business permits, the report said.

"It's difficult to rehabilitate a place without stopping operations first, especially with that kind of structural repair. There's really a lot more that needs to be fixed," Sanitation Chief Dr. Roell Romulo said.

Urban Funeral Homes' manager, Susan Cariño, denied the allegations, saying they have the  necessary permits to operate

"I really don't know about what they saw because I'm not the one who takes care of the dead,"

 Cariño said.

The five funeral homes barely passed any of the requirements for operation during their last inspection in February, the "24 Oras" report said.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/827764/qc-funeral-home-stink-more-corpses-questions

More bodies were found on Wednesday at a funeral home in Quezon City which authorities permanently shut down after residents complained of the foul stench coming from the establishment.

During a surprise inspection the other day, city health officials discovered around 120 rotting corpses stockpiled in body bags at Henry Memorial Services on A. Bonifacio Avenue in La Loma.

When a team sent by the health department returned to the funeral home yesterday to take the bodies and bring them to a cemetery for burial, they found more corpses in body bags in the other rooms. Like the ones earlier discovered, these were in varying stages of decomposition, enveloping the establishment in an overpowering stench.

The discoveries, however, did not end there. More corpses submerged in fluid were found in a well outside the funeral home.

In the end, the team loaded nearly 200 bodies into two dump trucks and brought them to Novaliches Public Cemetery, where they were buried in a rectangular pit nearly seven feet deep and measuring 230 meters by 250 meters. The bodies from the well were not included and would be retrieved today.

Verdades Linga, city health department officer, said that Wednesday’s burial was the biggest mass interment sponsored by the city government so far.

At press time, Henry Memorial Services owner Oscar Parales and manager Severino Mancia have yet to come forward and explain how so many bodies ended up rotting in the establishment, which was not equipped with proper freezers or a sewage treatment system.

The identities of the deceased and the manner of their death also remained a mystery. There were no death certificates or medico-legal documents recovered from the funeral home. The bags had no tags or labels.

“Public health is a graver concern that the death certificates,” Linga said.  “Which is more important, the death certificates or the lives of those still living in the neighborhood?”

According to Linga, the establishment violated Presidential Decree No. 856 or the sanitation code which requires corpses that are not embalmed to be buried within 48 hours.

Linga also noted that Henry Memorial Services did not have a special permit for a sewage treatment plant for the proper disposal of embalming fluids. “So the fluids would just go straight to the normal drain and can mix with the water used in the residential area,” she said.

She also observed that some of the bodies appear to have been dissected, raising suspicions that these were used in medical schools.

The funeral home operated without a business permit in violation of the local government code, said Garry Domingo, chief of the city’s business permits and licensing office. Mounting complaints from residents led to the issuance of a cease and desist order in September but this was ignored by the business owner, he added.

Records showed that Henry Memorial Services’s last business permit was approved in June 2015, when it was able to secure the other required licenses, like those for sanitation, fire safety and plumbing.

“For a city with over 70,000 business establishments, one or two can evade compliance,” Domingo told the Inquirer. “It is not an excuse, but it can happen.”

Despite yearly routine inspections, not all businesses in the city can be checked, he said. “Rest assured, the city will not stop addressing these concerns,” Domingo said as he warned other funeral parlors in the city.

Civil registrar Ramon Matabang said there were reports that the bodies were entrusted to Henry Memorial Services by other funeral homes which failed to claim them due to mounting fees.

“We have reports that they collect the bodies and offer storage and services but charge exorbitant fees,” he told the Inquirer.

According to him, some representatives from other establishments came yesterday to collect the bodies they had entrusted to the funeral home.

One of them, Jonathan Arceo of Everlasting Funeral Services, arrived as some of the bodies were being taken to the dump trucks.

Arceo wanted to retrieve the body of a 66-year-old Japanese national who died on Oct. 4. He presented a death certificate and said his company had paid P2,000 for storage and embalming services.

City officials, however, refused to let him retrieve the body.  “We don’t know how we will explain this to his relatives,” Arceo said.

The QCPD-La Loma station chief investigator, SPO2 Ramwil Relox, said that without death certificates it would be hard to determine whether the bodies died within Quezon City or were brought in from other funeral homes in Manila or other areas.

“We still have no idea where these bodies came from,” Relox told the Inquirer.

No business permits, bodies and organs everywhere, embalming and other fluids being run off into the drinking water. It's disgusting. More than that it's disrespectful to the dead and to their families. Living a good life entails dying a good death. These morticians rob people of that right. It goes to show the trope about Filipinos being so loving and caring and friendly is a thin veneer that hides a lot of rot.