The government last week took a step towards clarifying some issues in the area of unregulated columbarium operations by listing those which are operating within legal requirements, and those which are suspected of being non-compliant with regulations or operating illegally. And while the government stopped short of urging people to refrain from buying niches from the list of 52 operators suspected of being non-compliant, at least the public can now inspect this unofficial register of columbariums. In terms of consumer rights, this represents a slight improvement from the situation before where members of the public had nothing to refer to when trying to ascertain whether a certain columbarium was operating lawfully.

But in terms of alleviating the crisis in columbarium policy, the latest move will have limited effect. There are just 190,000 existing or planned public urn niches to meet an expected demand of more than 490,000 over the next decade, and the government cannot even decide on where to build new public columbariums, let alone come up with an alternative policy than just trying to catch up. Devising an unofficial list, which the government has admitted is neither comprehensive nor exhaustive, does little to remedy the years of neglect.

Instead, operators are feeling unfairly persecuted, being named and shamed as if they were criminals even though many of these supposed cases of non-compliance are still in contention. The government must follow up this list with concrete enforcement action and make a definitive list of columbariums which have been proven to be contravening regulations. However, the administration does not dare act with such conviction, since it has not decided what to do with the urns which have already been deposited in these columbariums nor how to handle the potential flood of disputes from families who have paid up to HK$200,000 to buy niches from unlicensed operators. So although the public now has a website with names of columbariums which may, or may not, be complying with various regulations, little progress has been made.