Life on earth is replete with expenses--even on the day you die.
Among the last things your family will ever buy for you is your coffin, or casket. And the fine-looking ones will always cost a pretty penny.
Luckily, Cebu 5th district Rep. Vincent Franco Frasco filed a bill in the ongoing 19th Congress that would make decent coffins affordable, especially for poor Filipinos.
Under Frasco's House Bill (HB) No. 102 or the proposed "Affordable Casket Act", all funeral establishments shall always maintain the availability of decent caskets that would cost not more than P20,000.
“In the event that there is no such casket available when needed and the family of the dead is an indigent family or extremely poor family as certified by the barangay chairman or any social worker, the funeral establishment shall be obliged to offer a casket of any higher value but the price to be paid by such indigent family o extremely poor family shall still be an amount not more than P20,000,” read the measure.
The full title of the bill is, "An Act regulating the sale of caskets by funeral establishments to ensure availability of affordable caskets, and appropriating funds therefor and for other purposes." It was filed last Juen 30.
In justifying his bill, Frasco claimed that dying "has become as costly as living itself" given all the costs that Filipinos need to shoulder in connection with funerals.
According to the solon, coffins cost anywhere from P5,000 to P110,000, depending on how fancy they are.
But he reckoned that the purchase of coffins ultimately becomes an additional burden "to the grief-stricken families, not to mention the indigents and extremely poor".