The lucrative private columbarium business has been thrown into confusion after two government departments came up with conflicting interpretations of what constitutes human remains.
The confusion arises from land lease disputes related to two private columbarium operators in Sha Tin, including Memorial Park Hong Kong. It has sold up to 1,000 of 3,300 niches at the facility, which was completed 18 months ago.
The park faces legal action by the Lands Department, which says it may have violated conditions of the land lease issued in the 1940s. The conditions specified the site could be neither a cemetery nor storage for human remains, which the lands officials interpreted as including ashes.
But this interpretation contradicts a statement in September by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department - in relation to a private cemetery with about 3,000 underground niches on Ma Shi Chau - that ashes are not human remains.
According to the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance, depositing or burying urns containing human remains in places other than a cemetery is an offence.
If the lands officials' interpretation is adopted, even keeping urns at home is not allowed, not to mention the blossoming development of private columbariums in multi-storey buildings in urban areas. No rule regulates such use at present because human ashes are not regarded as a hygiene risk, despite complaints about nuisance from neighbours.
The Food and Health Bureau said yesterday it upheld the interpretation that human remains did not include ashes. The Lands Department declined further comment as legal action might be pending. A spokeswoman would not say how extensive its crackdown was on columbariums it believed had breached land leases.
