In the fall, he will introduce the bill “On Funeral Business.” The need to reform the industry has been discussed for a long time. They decided to speed up the reform after the May armed riots in Moscow at the Khovanskoye cemetery. Compared to a similar current document adopted back in 1996, the new law fundamentally changes the ritual sphere. Its authors propose licensing the main types of funeral services, introducing uniform standards for market participants and allowing the construction of private and religious cemeteries.
Market participants say: for now The industry is regulated not by laws, but by “concepts”, often established by structures associated with law enforcement agencies.
As "DP" found out, in Petersburg, at the helm are the business partners of the co-owner of the Museum Management Company, Igor Minakov. The degree of opacity of the St. Petersburg funeral market with an annual turnover of over 6.2 billion rubles is evidenced by the fact that all cemetery administrations and funeral homes interviewed by DP categorically refused to comment on issues related to the industry.
Cemeteries in the shade
The main problem of the industry is opacity and corruption - no funeral law can solve, experts say. The funeral and ritual sphere is a classic shadow market. The volume of illegal money flow here is at least 60% of the total turnover.
In St. Petersburg there are about 90 cemeteries, they occupy 1.46 thousand hectares and belong to the city, and activities in the funeral sector are coordinated by (KRPPR). In fact, the situation is controlled by private ritual and funeral homes and agencies, to which the cemeteries have been transferred to management.
Until 2010, about half of them were controlled by structures affiliated with Igor Minakov’s Museum Management Company. He himself was among the founders of many funeral companies. One of his closest associates, Valery Larkin (in particular, he owns 30% of the Mining Company, 70% belongs to Minakov) has headed the Association of Funeral Industry Enterprises of St. Petersburg and the North-West (APPO) for many years. He is also a co-owner of a number of ritual agencies (for example, in the St. Petersburg ritual company he owns 80%, in Ritual-Trance and Siem - 50% each).
"It's no secret the connection local governments with ritual structures. LSGs are actually the main beneficiaries of funeral homes. The affiliation of officials leads to problems with antimonopoly legislation. The powers to manage cemeteries are often transferred to businessmen illegally. This leads to the trading of places in cemeteries. Today, getting a place in a cemetery for free is an exception to the rule,” admits Pavel Ulanov, a member of the working group on improving funeral legislation of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. Bans will not solve these problems. “If there is a ban, there will be a way to get around it,” he believes.
Not a single member of the APPO did not answer DP’s questions about the situation in the city’s funeral industry. The association gave a streamlined comment: “There is no such thing as a market for funeral services. Some organizations are engaged in the production of goods for ritual purposes, others are involved in road transport, others provide services at the cemetery, make monuments. All these are different markets.”
Head of Legal Department of KRPPR German Shustikov was also not very eloquent: “We need a new law, there are many gaps in the current one. But we need to take into account the specifics of the regions.”
"For a long tongue They’ll bury you quickly and you won’t even notice,” explains an employee of one of the regional funeral homes.
Good or nothing
According to representatives of the Union funeral organizations and crematoria of the Russian Federation (SPOK), the new law will not solve many of the pressing problems of the industry. Thus, it does not determine where medical services end in relation to the deceased, who was recently a hospital patient, and ritual services begin, notes SPOK President Pavel Kodysh. Because of this, morgues intervene in the ritual sphere, offering relatives of the deceased their services in conducting funeral ceremonies.
"It is not clear who should manage information about the deceased. The bill prohibits employees of medical institutions and civil servants from transmitting any information in this regard. The procedure for its provision will be established by the Government of the Russian Federation. The law introduces fines for trading this information: for individuals - up to 70 thousand rubles, for legal entities - up to 200 thousand,” says SPOK vice-president Vladimir Rodkin.
One more problem - reclamation of abandoned graves. The current law on funerals does not clearly state the mechanism for recognizing a burial as ownerless. The new document does not fill this gap either. It is necessary to introduce into the law the concept of “responsible for burial” - he would take upon himself the responsibility for caring for the grave. “Then we will have legal grounds to recognize the grave as ownerless and rehabilitate it if the person in charge fails. After all, there are graves where no one comes for 100 years. And nothing can be done with them,” explains Kodysh.
It is not clear in the bill and mechanism for creating private cemeteries. Now all graveyards are state or municipal. The Ministry of Construction proposes to allow the construction of cemeteries under a concession scheme and allow representatives of religious denominations to arrange private burials. The investor will not build private cemeteries far from the city - there will be no demand. And in the city land is expensive. To recoup costs, businessmen will have to sell burial plots for 90 thousand rubles. According to current law, seats must be provided free of charge. In reality, the plots are for sale. Prices reach up to 200 thousand rubles.
The new law will have to to adopt 28 resolutions of the Government of the Russian Federation, and how effective they will be is now impossible to say, summed up Pavel Kodysh.
Unhealthy competition
Representatives of other Russian regions willingly share information about the problems of the “funeral”. “This industry is being protected. Shootings for spheres of influence in cemeteries are a common occurrence. Those who are not connected with municipalities and the security forces that control them are simply squeezed out of the market,” says a businessman from Chelyabinsk.
Machines allocated for free transportation of bodies of privileged categories of citizens or ownerless remains is given to private companies. As a result, the unidentified dead can lie for weeks where fate overtook them, his colleague claims.
This is confirmed by the CEO of Tomsk Ritual services salon Elena Cherinko: “We all work according to the same scheme. Information about the dead is sold by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and healthcare. The authorities have a position of non-interference. I open a ritual hall - they break my windows. I write a statement to the prosecutor’s office - they say: there are no violations. On April 25, we "They burned down the store. We found bottles of gasoline. Again the prosecutor's office did not see any violations, they did not open a case. I wrote to the president. I received a response, sent it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the prosecutor's office. They immediately found violations in the local funeral industry." According to Cherinko, until 2013, the Tomsk market was controlled by the head of the forensic medical examination of the Tomsk region. After his dismissal, the redistribution of the market began. "We're living on a tinderbox," she says.
The state sets tariffs for the so-called “guaranteed list of services” (see “Prices”). The cost of this package is 12.3 thousand rubles. It is assumed that a place in the cemetery is provided free of charge, and the monument costs 3.5 thousand rubles.
These official prices are in no way not connected to reality. “They will bury you for free only if you mind your own business,” DP’s interlocutor from the funeral company either warned or threatened. Usually, without money, you don’t have to come for a plot. Sometimes they offer free plots in unclaimed places, for example in the swampy part of cemeteries. In order not to place the coffin directly in the water, you will have to pay at least 10 thousand rubles. The upper limit on housing prices for afterlife does not exist.
“Competition in the industry is unhealthy. Our sphere is the most criminal after drug trafficking. Even the arms trade comes after us. Law enforcement agencies do not assist in establishing order in the funeral business,” complains Pavel Kodysh. In his opinion, the ritual market needs state regulation.
Licensing in the ritual sphere is necessary. It would be most correct to introduce licensing not of legal entities, but of individuals (ritual agents, funeral directors). I support the initiative to differentiate the functions of medical institutions and funeral agencies. It is necessary to prohibit the provision of funeral services in morgues, forensic medical examination rooms and pathology departments. The shortcomings of the bill can be eliminated. It is important to bring the industry’s problems to the interdepartmental level and delimit the areas of responsibility of regulatory authorities.
Mikhail Alekhin
General Director of JSC "War Memorial Company"
The funeral industry has many problems. For example, it is necessary to resolve the issue of removing the bodies of the dead. As soon as the ambulance leaves the house, a representative of the funeral agency, whom no one called, is already standing on the threshold. I think such work must be under state control. In general, I don’t understand how competition can exist in the funeral industry. Who will transport more bodies or who will dig more graves? If there is competition, it should be in terms of quality - for example, in the quality of servicing graves and landscaping cemeteries.
Lidia Gromova
Deputy Chairman of the Committee for the Development of Entrepreneurship and the Consumer Market of St. Petersburg
Select the fragment with the error text and press Ctrl+Enter
According to statistics, every person has to deal with a funeral once every ten years. In nine cases out of ten, the funeral agent appears on the threshold of the deceased’s house before the ambulance or police officers. The main thing in this profession is to get to the body of the deceased first. Funeral services are an unlicensed activity: anyone can organize a funeral. Certain types of funeral services were already licensed in the period from 1994 to 2002. After the abolition of licensing, when a stream of individual entrepreneurs poured into Moscow from all regions and former countries CIS, there was a huge demand for information about death from everyone who possessed it. First of all, this information appears from employees of medical institutions and the police. The transfer of personal data is illegal, so the cost of information about one deceased person can exceed 25 thousand rubles, which ultimately affects the cost of funeral services of “black” agents. Tariffs are dictated by the agents themselves, having assessed the client’s solvency by eye. Payment is made without a cash register. Fake strict reporting forms are used as a check. The funeral agent can enter absolutely any price on such forms.
Where do ritual agents come from?
Private funeral agencies imitate government institutions. When you search for “ritual service,” the first page of any search engine shows many different “city” and even “state funeral services,” which in fact are not such. Such organizations illegally use state symbols in their documents and websites in order to inspire trust among clients. They don't pay taxes and don't invest in infrastructure. At the same time, such agencies organize paid courses for future ritual agents, where they are taught the tricks of the profession.
And the trick of the profession is that the future agent is taught to manipulate a client who is already in a helpless state due to the loss of a loved one. The cost of training in illegal courses varies from 5 to 15 thousand rubles, but it “justifies itself.” At expensive courses, the future agent is introduced to “their” people in the structures, and these are the same workers of morgues, ambulances and police. At the end of the course, which lasts an average of two weeks, the agent is given a certificate with illegally used heraldic symbols.
After training, when the newly minted ritualist has memorized all the necessary phrases about condolences, he is “attached” to the area of his residence, where he is on duty for days on end, waiting for a call about someone else’s death.
All this time, the ritual agent does not go anywhere, he sits on the phone. Having heard the long-awaited call, the agent must be “at the address” within 10 minutes - before other agents rush there. Being on edge after a long wait, agents often start fights right on the doorstep.
If a potential client decides to refuse the imposed services, then the ritual agent will definitely give him a form to sign in order to record in writing the refusal of the alleged free services and even psychological help. These papers don't mean anything. Such actions are designed to make it difficult for a person under stress to sign an “official” document.
If the ritual agent, having overtaken or defeated competitors in a fight, gains access to the body of the deceased, he will definitely require an advance payment - half of the total amount. As mentioned above, the agents themselves set the rates. Upon entering the house, the ritualist immediately assesses how much he can extract from the grieving family. A modest funeral costs on average 50 thousand, the agent receives 20 percent of this amount, the rest goes to the agency. A successful ritualist can conduct several funerals a day, earning a good amount of interest.
Another tasty morsel for scammers was the sale land plots for burial in cemeteries, where, by law, plots are provided free of charge. People who have lost a loved one often fall for this bait and give scammers in the Moscow region from 30 to 80 thousand rubles, and sometimes more.
How are things outside the capital?
It is much easier to organize a funeral company in the regions than in the capital, but their income is also more modest. Organizing a funeral in the outback costs on average about 20 thousand rubles. All that is needed to organize a funeral is usually a supported UAZ as a hearse, a driver, diggers (they will also carry out the removal of the coffin from the morgue) and a proven scheme for purchasing personal data from employees of medical institutions. The bribe for an ambulance employee is much lower than in Moscow, no more than 5 thousand rubles. The profitability of such a business can reach over 100 percent, given that the tariffs are still dictated by the ritualists themselves.
Due to lack of control most of cemeteries in the regions were formed spontaneously, the place where the proposed cemetery is located may have a completely different purpose, for example, it could be a field for sowing. This is where infrastructure problems arise. If a tree falls on someone’s grave, the road to the cemetery is washed out by rain, or a garbage dump spontaneously forms there, the municipal authorities will not be able to restore order there, since officially there is no cemetery there. To solve the problem, it is necessary to re-register documents to change the status of special-purpose lands, which local officials do not always want to do.
The line between medical and funeral services
In the West, there have long been funeral homes that provide the full range of funeral services, including morgue services. It is almost impossible to organize a private morgue in Russia. This is used by healthcare workers. Thus, in the morgue of the city of Dedovsk near Moscow, morgue employees for many years demanded money for free services. There is one city hospital for the entire 30,000-population Dedovsk. The hospital also operates the only morgue in the city. According to employees of the medical institution, from 4 to 10 bodies are taken from this morgue every day. Nikolai Morozov, who was burying his 84-year-old mother, faced extortion: an orderly demanded 10 thousand rubles for free procedures for the deceased. The news that the police were inspecting the morgue was greeted with enthusiasm by local residents. Witnesses say that on holidays and weekends the amount increased to 15 thousand rubles. Now all the employees of the ill-fated morgue have been fired, but this is not an isolated case - Verum receives such complaints regularly.
It is obvious that it is necessary to make changes to the current legislation, which could put an end to the war between medical institutions and funeral agencies: medical institutions should not engage in commercial activities in the ritual sphere. True, the deputy head of the Department of Health, Tatyana Mukhtasarova, does not agree with this: it was on her initiative that changes were made to the hospital charters - “providing funeral services” was added to the types of activities of hospitals, although the relevant legislation does not provide for the provision of paid funeral services by health care institutions.
Ritual monopoly
According to a survey conducted by the public organization "Verum", Moscow residents have become less likely to use the services of uninvited agents, since it is much easier and calmer to carry out the entire procedure right in the morgue, where legally There are various city specialized services. Of course, this is a good trend, which allows us to withdraw huge amounts of money from the “gray” segment and direct it to the city budget.
But it must be said that the state budgetary institution “Ritual” is not so “budgetary”. The cost of providing funeral services is inflated. Other, smaller market players also focus on these same prices. Manual digging of soil is estimated in Moscow at 600-800 rubles per cubic meter. It turns out that the real cost of digging one grave is no more than 3 thousand rubles. State Budgetary Institution “Ritual” estimates this service from 8 to 10 thousand, depending on the season. So it’s still worth looking at how much the transfer of funeral services into one hand will raise prices for funeral services.
A light in the end of a tunnel
Illegal money flow today accounts for 60-70 percent of total turnover. According to the Department of Trade and Services, there are about 2 thousand “black” agents and organizations in Moscow. The money in their circulation is stolen from citizens and from the state budget. Corruption “offerings” within the chain “hospital/morgue - ritual organization” reach $1 million per year per ritual organization.
The root of the problem lies in the inconsistency of the provisions of the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Affairs” today. The law, adopted back in 1996, was created to regulate our industry during the transition period; further amendments were supposed to be made to it. But for two decades this was never done. As a result, the law contradicts the Federal Law on Antimonopoly Activities, the Land and Civil Codes. The explanation is simple: establishing order in the “funeral” area is unprofitable for the criminal underworld that has developed here over all these years.
Why, despite the general desire to restore order in the industry, is there still no normal law? Yes, because there is no structure or organization that would know all the nuances of the industry and would be able to create a full-fledged document. The criminalization of the funeral market was proceeding at an accelerating pace; more precisely, it did not stop, starting in the 1990s. This is the only area of the economy in which the revenue of private organizations comes only in the form of cash. It is unlikely that anyone can remember that they paid for services to funeral agents or organizations through the cash register, and certainly no one was ever asked to familiarize themselves with the state tariffs for funeral services. Because they simply don't exist.
Many industry experts, not unreasonably, see the problem of the growth of crime in the absence of a single regulatory government body. Today in the professional environment there are proposals to create a Federal Agency within the system of any department related to the ritual industry. The question remains open. The bills were prepared by the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Ministry of Construction, and not a single option was accepted for consideration by legislators due to serious structural shortcomings of these projects. Yes and Working group on improving legislation in the field of burial and funeral business is not exactly the body that could dot all the i’s; the issue of legislation should be resolved at the interdepartmental level.
But the adoption of the law is precisely the most important task, the solution of which would allow returning the ritual industry to the legal field. It is necessary to distribute powers between the Government of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Finance and the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. And most importantly, it is necessary to outline the framework and boundaries, to give a legal definition of the funeral services market itself, which today is divided into a number of segments that function almost independently and separately. As a result, the existing law does not define the distinction between medical and funeral services, and there is no control over the privacy of information about the deceased. The issues of creating private cemeteries, recognizing burials as ownerless, and the issues of financing state specialized services (SSS) involved in the burial, in particular, of unidentified persons, have not been resolved.
Plus, after the adoption of the new law, the relevant Government resolutions will have to be adopted. So there is a lot of serious work ahead if we really want order. It is not by chance that we say “we”. We are a civil society, professionals and government agencies who are interested in ending the lawlessness in the field of funeral services, because the funeral industry sounds formal. In fact, we are talking about our human, cultural and historical memory. In the meantime, there is no law - crime is growing stronger, the state is not receiving enough taxes, citizens are suffering, and market participants are silent.
All these issues are usually resolved by introducing state licensing or self-regulation (SRO). Experts are more inclined towards self-regulation, since this system allows for faster assessment, has more resources than the licensee, to control the quality of work; moreover, it is not tied to the region, but is valid throughout Russia and can have an unlimited validity period. The mechanism for expulsion from SRO members in case of violation of the rules deprives the organization of the opportunity to work.
To ensure that the introduction of SRO does not lead to an increase in prices for services for the end consumer, the issue must be resolved in parallel with the introduction of a tariff system. In any case, prices cannot exceed those currently offered by “black” agents. The state should assist funeral service workers in creating conditions for self-regulation of professional activities. At the same time, it is necessary to develop a system of voluntary certification of services. Accordingly, work without SRO approval will be a direct violation of the law and will entail administrative or criminal liability and liquidation of the enterprise. At the same time, membership in an SRO should protect the legitimate interests and rights of bona fide organizations when interacting with authorities.
UNION OF FUNERAL ORGANIZATIONS AND CREMATORIES
MOSCOW STATE INSTITUTE OF SERVICE
INTERREGIONAL SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL SPECIALIZED DEVELOPMENT CENTER
CONCEPT
STATE POLICY IN THE FIELD OF RITUAL SERVICES
(PROJECT)
SAINT PETERSBURG
2006
“Concepts of state policy in the field of funeral services”
Introduction
Problems of industry development.
Problems of legal regulation.
Relationships between federal, regional and municipal authorities.
Execution of state guarantees.
Relationships between enterprises of different forms of ownership.
Logistics support.
Investments in the industry.
In the organization of service.
In creating a competitive environment.
In organizing infrastructure and using land.
The role of public organizations.
Foreign experience
National characteristics of the organization of funeral services
The practice of cremation and the activities of crematoria
Rationale for government policy changes
In the field of legal regulation.
In the field of management.
In public-private partnership.
Investments in the industry.
In relationships with public organizations.
Proposals for creating an Industry Development Strategy
Analysis of modern experience of strategic planning in Russia
6.3.Development of a new Concept of legal regulation.
6.4. Proposals for priority activities to be included in the Specific Action Plan for the implementation of the Strategy.
Introduction
Archaeological studies of artifacts of material culture show that the ritual of burial of people arose not as an independent phenomenon, independent of other processes of human life, but as the development of his ideas about the World, about his role in it and in society. Thus, throughout the history of mankind, the burial ritual has been an integral part of the culture of society and at each stage of development can characterize the level of its spiritual and material components.
Until recently, it was believed that the place of culture in any economic system was a more or less heavy, but necessary burden on the neck of the state and its wealthy citizens. As for the return that culture has regularly brought to society and the state for thousands of years, its value belongs to a purely spiritual category. That is, within the framework of monetarist concepts, the issue of the profitability of culture has never been seriously considered. To assume the possibility of equivalent exchange of one or another of its products for tangible material goods was “non-economic thinking.”
J. Soros is considered to be the pioneer of the fact that the modern economy is acquiring new qualitative features and is increasingly moving away from traditional economics. It was he who introduced the concept of “virtualization of the economy.” A problem to which more and more scientific works have been devoted in recent years.
The virtualization of the economy is associated with the unusually rapid increasing influence of people, their ideas and thoughts on the real processes occurring in the economy. The main manifestation of such an economy is a sharp weakening of the cause-and-effect relationships previously identified by economic science. People's thinking becomes one of the main pricing factors, one of the conditions shaping market demand for goods and services. In other words, the mental activity of market subjects becomes one of the objective market processes that influence the acceleration or deceleration of economic growth and the formation of certain market features in different countries.
It is well known that the personal qualities of people are formed in two main ways: through the inheritance of a certain genotype and through the culture that has developed in the territory of residence. Historical roots, in turn, influence both the formation of genetic characteristics and the creation of sustainable national traditions. Determine cultural differences between nations and nationalities.
National traditions are passed on from generation to generation. They develop and change over long periods of time and express the characteristics of the historical fate of a certain people. The socio-historical environment in which the latter lives and acts has a decisive influence on the nature of the formation of stereotypes of human consciousness and behavior. Stereotypes are understood as ingrained standards of perception of the surrounding world and conscious and subconscious actions corresponding to this perception.
About twenty years ago, a new branch of science appeared, called non-infectious epidemiology. He studies diseases of a non-physical (immaterial) nature. In terms of the power of their impact on people, they have consequences as catastrophic as the most severe infections. Their causes are: the spread of false ideas in society, psychosis, panic, fashion - that is, they have social pathogens (infections).
The difficult demographic situation in Russia is no secret to anyone. This problem calls into question the very possibility of preserving our statehood. From this point of view, the study conducted in comparison with depression in 1930 is interesting. in the USA and an almost similar situation during the economic downturn of the 90s. in Russia. During the period of the “economic nightmare,” our population growth was 8 times lower. It says it's a social disease Russian society much heavier.
The opposite trend is also visible. In our country, since the end of World War II, mortality has increased. The exceptions were 86 and 87. last century. These were the years of the beginning of perestroika and the accompanying spiritual upsurge and ideology of hope.
Some quantitative indicators of the new policy can also be cited:
Mortality decreased by more than 10%;
Robberies and robberies by 24%;
Murders and attempts by 30%;
Suicides by 40%.
According to the Association of Independent Scientists “Russia XX-XXI Century”, the share of the influence of the economic factor on the current demographic situation is only 30%. The main factor lies in the social sphere, i.e. determined by policy state power. Thus, the main medicine should be new policy, capable of restoring hope and faith to people that as a result of the socio-economic reforms being carried out in the country, their lives will really improve.
Various areas of modern scientific knowledge - economics and medicine - have come to the conclusion about the objective materialization of human thought and the culture that forms it. Therefore, politics, as the main factor in the consolidation or confrontation of people, becomes decisive in determining social development.
The implementation by the Government of the Russian Federation of national projects proposed by the President is a completely justified change in state policy priorities. The priority of government investment in human capital means that economic development should be focused on solving the most pressing problems of citizens. Unfortunately, one of the most pressing problems affecting everyone without exception has remained unattended by the authorities. This is a whole complex that requires urgent resolution of issues in such a delicate area, which annually affects the widest sections of the population (estimated at 25-30 million), as seeing off its residents on their last journey.
The above region national culture Traditionally, in Russian history, it is on the periphery of the state’s attention. This approach, also traditionally, is explained by the slogan of power structures at all levels: “First of all, it is necessary to take care of the living!” Let us allow ourselves to refute this approach as not only incorrect, but also causing significant harm to the prestige of the state and causing distrust in its social policy in the eyes of our fellow citizens. Attention to and provision of a decent level of ritual for seeing off the lives of their citizens is perceived by Russians as a true indicator of the state’s attitude towards people during their lifetime. Therefore, the state of affairs in the funeral sector is in clear contradiction with the ongoing social policy in general.
The current state of this area can be characterized as clearly inconsistent with the capabilities of Russia's economic situation. In the maintenance and development of city cemeteries, the level of equipment used, especially morgues and crematoria, the development of the scientific, informational, methodological, educational base of the funeral business, there is a whole range of problems that require urgent solutions. With the abolition of licensing, effective state control in this area was also lost. In some regions (…..) there are glaring facts indicating the need to take a set of urgent measures at the Government level. First of all, we are talking about the implementation of the recommendations of the parliamentary hearings “On the practice of applying the Federal Law “On burial and funeral business””.
The recommendations were developed in 2003 and so far, at none of the levels and structures of government, appropriate decisions have been made and the necessary actions have not been taken. This indicates that this area of social policy needs a radical change in methods and structure government controlled. This is required both by the complexity and versatility of the problem itself, and by the number of federal departments (currently 17 are involved in decision-making in this area), as well as the lack of a clear division of spheres of influence and responsibility of federal, regional and municipal authorities.
Due to all of the above, the main goal of this work is to develop recommendations for improving the efficiency of state management of processes and economic entities of various forms of ownership in this highly problematic and, at the same time, extremely important social sector of the economy.
It should be noted that in order to establish the necessary order in the above area, state budget expenditures should be tens of times smaller in comparison with the envisaged costs for solving problems in the field of education, health care and others. Such costs can be reduced to a significant extent by attracting private investment. To do this, it is necessary to properly build public-private partnerships in this sector of the economy. The time frame for implementing projects before receiving approval of the state’s efforts in the relevant area from both domestic and international public opinion is also incomparable. If the following is immediately implemented, this period, according to independent experts, will be no more than 1-2 years.
The concept was developed in accordance with the requirements of Federal Law No. 115 of July 20, 1995 “On state forecasting and social economic development Russian Federation". The Law defines the Concept as a system of ideas about the strategic goals and priorities of socio-economic policy, the most important directions and means of achieving these goals. Thus, this term means the initial pre-planned (preceding the Strategic Development Plan) forecasting and analytical document containing a system of ideas about strategic choices, strategic goals and priorities for the development of funeral services and the funeral industry, the main provisions of state policy to achieve the goals and means for them implementation. The development of the Concept is based on research to study the problems of the funeral industry and a systematic approach to developing appropriate proposals for the formation of a new effective state policy in the field of funeral services.
State of the industry and main problems
The ritual and funeral business is one of the most socially significant industries in the service sector and covers almost the entire population of the country. More than 2 million people die in the country every year, and about 25-30 million Russians attend their funerals. Every adult citizen repeatedly visits cemeteries throughout the year to honor the memory of deceased relatives and friends.
There are currently more than 9 thousand organizations in the country (including 6,400 municipal ones) providing ritual funeral services. They employ 37.4 thousand people (data for 2003). Orders for burial are accepted by 2.3 thousand collection points, including 440 in rural areas. There are 53.3 thousand cemeteries in the country, which occupy
area more than 123 thousand hectares. The cremation business is extremely poorly developed - in 9 regions (subjects of the Federation) there are 13 crematoria, specific gravity cremation accounts for 7% of the number of deaths. In accordance with the law of the Russian Federation “On burial and funeral business,” 1.4 thousand specialized services for funeral matters have been created, of which 870 are municipal enterprises.
During the implementation of the Federal Target Program “Improving Ritual Services for the Population for 1993-2000,” general principles for organizing the funeral business were laid down. In 1995, a decree of the Government of the Russian Federation was issued “On approval of the Regulations on the procedure for licensing activities for the provision of funeral services” (unfortunately, licensing of these services was canceled in 2001). In 1996, the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business” and the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On guarantees of the rights of citizens to provide burial services for the dead” were adopted. Social guarantees have been established regarding the provision of funeral services, including a guaranteed list of burial services free of charge.
In 2001, the Government of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution “On approval of the list of funeral accessories, the sale of which is exempt from value added tax.” A number of subjects of the Federation have adopted their own laws and regulations on the funeral business. In 2002-2005, the following were published: Recommendations of the State Construction Committee of Russia on the procedure for funerals and the maintenance of cemeteries in the Russian Federation; collections of reference books of normative legal acts on funeral services (3 editions); collections of scientific works on the organization of funeral business. Specialized magazines “Requiem” and “Funeral House” are published.
The country is carrying out targeted work to improve the organization of the funeral business. New types and forms of funeral services are emerging, and their quality is improving.
The company ZAO Diagnostics of Emergency Situations has developed projects for domestic crematoria of various classes, and has launched mass production of cremation installations PKT-4000. The first 10 ovens have been installed and are operating at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk crematorium of the State Unitary Enterprise “Ritual” in Moscow.
In Moscow state university service since 1997, a training center has been operating, specializing in professional education in the field of funeral business. Annual professional exhibitions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and other Russian cities play a major role in the consolidation and development of the funeral industry. Scientific and practical conferences and seminars are regularly held. The Union of Funeral Organizations and Crematoriums, the Corporation of Funeral Directors, and other voluntary organizations in the industry actively participate in this work.
In recent years, much has been done to develop the industry, especially in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ivanovo, Vologda, Kaliningrad, and other regions of Russia. However, there remains a whole range of problems that need to be solved both at the federal and regional levels.
Problems of industry development
State regulation of this activity does not yet represent a holistic system. The requirements of a number of important articles of the federal law on the organization of funeral business as an independent type of activity are not met. There is no single public policy development of the funeral business and general civil funeral culture. Burial places have not been determined in case of emergencies and man-made disasters.
Despite the needs of individual regions, cremation services are slowly developing. Crematoria operate in only 10 cities of the country. On average in Russia, cremation does not exceed 7% (for comparison: in Europe and the USA this figure reaches 80-90%).
Local governments in many regions do a poor job of solving the issues of maintaining and improving urban and rural cemeteries, including military graves. Swampy, low-lying areas of land that are unsuitable for these purposes are often allocated for cemeteries. The cost of land offered for cemeteries is increasing enormously. In funeral services, there are often fly-by-night companies, random and unprepared people. There are facts of illegal burials. The population is not sufficiently informed about their rights and responsibilities in the field of burial, about the current regulatory documents in this area. It is required to amend Article 5 of the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Affairs” in terms of clarifying the will of persons regarding the decent treatment of the body after their death and consent to the removal (transplantation) of organs.
In this regard, participants in parliamentary hearings identified the following key problems:
federal the legislative framework the funeral business needs significant improvement, and the regional business is unsatisfactorily developed;
the fixed cost of funeral services provided according to a guaranteed list free of charge (1000 rubles) violates the right of citizens to a decent burial, and, to a large extent, does not cover the real costs of specialized funeral services, which leads to a deterioration in their financial conditions;
the abolition of licensing for the provision of funeral services and the lack of a system of standards in the industry leads to the curtailment of state and municipal regulation of this activity, a decrease in the level of protection of citizens from unscrupulous entrepreneurs;
there are no legal documents on the creation and operation of cemeteries, the allocation of land plots for them, and the procedure for using burial places has not been determined for citizens;
the information and scientific base of the funeral business is poorly developed, there is no one system accounting for burials in municipalities, at the regional and federal levels, which greatly complicates the search for burial places of citizens;
Qualified requirements for funeral service workers have not been determined, there is no unified system of certification, advanced training, training and retraining of personnel;
there is no clear mechanism for interaction between participants in the sphere of funeral services - federal, regional and local authorities, state (municipal) and private funeral services, civil registry offices, medical institutions, social protection authorities;
Many municipal, especially rural cemeteries are in unsatisfactory condition; funds for their maintenance, improvement and protection are not allocated; in cases of vandalism and abuse in cemeteries, real measures of administrative and criminal liability are not applied;
There is no statistical reporting on the number of cemeteries (crematoriums) and the area they occupy.
Regulatory Issues
Inconsistency of the current legislative and regulatory framework with the requirements market economy, the practice of organizing ritual and funeral services, currently significantly hampers the development of the industry.
The current Law of the Russian Federation “On burial and funeral business” was adopted in 1996. Its adoption was, of course, a progressive step, which made it possible to significantly improve the regulatory support for the activities of ritual organizations and firms. 10 years have passed (and for Russia during the reform period, 10 years is a huge period) and the Law has become a brake on the further development of the funeral industry, one of the main problems. The practice of ritual services has gone far ahead, but legislation has frozen in place.
In recent years, hundreds of new commercialorganizations that, in accordance with market requirements,provide opportunities for the widest choice of forms of ritualservice. The industry employs thousands of highly educated specialists, scientists, and reserve officers who in 1996 would not have even thought about working in the funeral industry. But now they determine the strategy and tactics of the funeral business.
Land relations became fundamentally different. The others were state and municipal enterprises that manage cemeteries. Their relationship is moving to the principles of a market economy, offering citizens a variety of ritual and funeral services, including installation of monuments, floral decoration of burial sites, provision of service areas, etc.
All these changes are not taken into account by the current Law. It doesn't haveeven professional terminology - what and how to interpret, howunderstand this or that expression. Each region, each group of specialists has to do this independently. They often use different understandable apparatus and do not always understand each other. The Law itself lacks the concept"cemetery".
The law does not in any way define the forms and methods of activity, the subjects of conduct of organizations operating in the market of ritual and funeral services, which are business companies or partnerships, other non-state and non-municipal enterprises. The issues of participation of such organizations in the ownership, management and development of key objects of the ritual and funeral sphere: cemeteries and crematoria are not regulated by law.
It is for this reason that the cremation business in Russia, at present, is practically not developing - the constituent entities of the Federation do not have funds for the construction of crematoria, and the federal budget does not provide money for this purpose. At the same time, private structures have the means and desire to create crematoria. However, they cannot engage in such a business - the Law does not allow it, which clearly defines that crematoria can only be under the jurisdiction of state or municipal authorities.
The regulatory framework regulating the funeral business in the Russian Federation currently needs additional processing and improvement. The provisions of current laws contain whole line uncertainties and often gaps. Problems of legal regulation of relations related to burial and funeral business exist both at the level of federal legislation and at the level of legislation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
The first group of problems relates to the legal regulation of the organization of funeral business as a branch of economic activity of individual subjects of the Russian Federation. The current Federal Law of the Russian Federation “On burial and funeral business” does not completely solve this group of problems; in fact, it refers the organization of funeral business to the jurisdiction of the authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and local governments. For Moscow and St. Petersburg, from January 1, 2005, the powers of local government bodies in the field of funerals and burials can be withdrawn from their jurisdiction “in favor” of the state authorities of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Such withdrawals must be formalized by the relevant laws of the specified constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
This group includes problems: uncertainties legal status specialized services on funeral issues, the participation of organizations and enterprises with non-state capital in the market for funeral services and in the market for directly burying services for deceased citizens. With the abolition of licensing for the provision of funeral services, the question remains unresolved about the degree of monopoly of state
enterprises and institutions in the field of providing funeral services, on the differentiation of funeral services into those that only specialized funeral services have the right to provide, and those that almost any “economic entity” has the right to provide. These problems cannot always be effectively resolved at the level of legislation of the Russian Federation within the framework of the powers granted to it.
Reform of the legislation on land and land management has led to the need for zoning of settlement lands, approval by the constituent entities of the Russian Federation of land use and development rules and urban planning regulations individually for each territorial zone individually, which requires a lot of and painstaking work. This problem equally applies to plots of land allocated for burial places (cemeteries and crematoria).
The second group of problems relates to the legislation of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and can, to a certain extent, be solved by the adoption of laws and by-laws by the constituent entities of the Russian Federation within the framework of existing federal legislation. We are talking, first of all, about the unsettled legal relations in the field of organizing funeral business, the lack of stable regional legislation, predictability and certainty in the emerging legal relations with the participation of authorities, organizations of various forms of ownership and citizens.
For example, the following issues remain unresolved or not fully resolved:
About the funeral business as a separate branch of the city economy and
structure of state management of the funeral business;
On the legal status of lands allocated for burial places;
About the ownership of land, allocated for
cemeteries and other burial places;
On the rights of citizens to the burial places of their relatives;
On the consequences of keeping burial sites unkempt
condition;
on the legal regime for repeated use of land
areas allocated for burial;
on the division of powers between executive authorities
subjects of the Russian Federation and local governments;
on the requirements for specialized services, according to
funeral matters;
issues of funeral business, their place in the structure of the funeral organization
cases in a constituent entity of the Russian Federation;
A number of other questions.
Legislation of the subjects of the federation (understood in a broad sense, including laws and regulations regulations) in the field of funeral business and burial of citizens does not form a coordinated system of norms of varying legal force, but remains scattered and few in number. Many issues remain unresolved.
Relations between federal, regional and municipal authorities
The lack of proper attention to the problems of the ritual and funeral sphere on the part of state authorities and local self-government leads to the fact that in many regions, to date, specialized services have not been created, there are no boards of trustees on funeral issues. Not all regions have adopted their regional laws “On burial and funeral business.” Their absence excludes the possibility of a systematic, comprehensive, purposeful work to develop and ensure the normal functioning of industry enterprises.
Local governments in many regions do not satisfactorily address the issues of maintenance and improvement of urban and rural cemeteries, including military graves. In funeral services, there are often fly-by-night companies, random and unprepared people. There are facts of illegal burials. The population is not sufficiently informed about their rights and responsibilities in the field of burial, about the current regulatory documents in this area.
In a number of regions, two or three administrative structures are responsible for the development of the industry, which cannot always agree on interaction. Thus, the public utility service is responsible for the work of cemeteries, and the activities of organizations
the ritual sphere (accepting orders, selling ritual and funeral supplies, hearse transportation, farewell rituals, etc.) is supervised by the consumer market or small business division.
In the regions, issues of regulatory, legal and financial support for the activities of enterprises that manage cemeteries are also not resolved. Often, local governments simply do not have the funds to maintain and improve cemeteries.
The multi-level system of coordination and regulation of the development of the ritual and funeral complex of the Russian Federation consists of 4 levels:
Federal State.
Federal-regional state (at the level
federal districts).
Regional state (at the level of federal subjects).
At the federal-regional state level (federal districts), there is no body responsible for coordination and regulation. Thus, there is a gap in the vertical of power.
Federal state level
At this level, the main regulatory framework of the industry is formed. Federal laws are developed and adopted here:
about burial and funeral business (new edition);
technical regulations “Safety of objects, materials,
equipment, tools used in the ritual funeral sphere" (he
should replace SanPiN).
At the federal level, the following are developed and approved:
agency "Rostekhregulirovanie" - national standards By
issues of industry activity, including terms and definitions,
general technical conditions, for individual provision processes
ritual and funeral services;
Ministry of Economic Development and Ministry of Regional Development of the Russian Federation and
The Ministry of Health and Social Development together with the Union of Funeral Organizations and
crematoriums - draft Rules for the provision of ritual and funeral services
(for submission for approval by the Government of the Russian Federation), as well as “Draft Rules
work of municipal cemeteries and crematoria" - as a recommendation
for their approval in the constituent entities of the federation or municipality.
Public formation at the federal level:
section of ritual and funeral services as part of the Development Committee
consumer market TIP RF;
The organization of control over the activities of ritual and funeral organizations at the federal and regional levels is carried out by Rospotrebnadzor and its territorial bodies in the Federal Subjects.
Regional state level
The subject of coordination and regulation of the development of the ritual and funeral sphere at this level is the sectoral government bodies of the subject of the federation.
At this level, the entire regional regulatory framework for the industry is formed, including:
regional law “On burial and funeral business”;
the procedure for creating cemeteries and the procedure for allocating land for cemeteries;
rules for the operation of cemeteries (municipal, state and/or
private);
operating rules for crematoria (municipal, state and/or
private);
rules of operation of pantheons (depositories, morgues);
operating rules for specialized funeral services
affairs;
procedure for the creation and functioning of specialized services for
funeral matters.
The regional administration develops and approves:
General scheme for the creation, construction and reconstruction of cemeteries
on the territory of a subject of the federation;
program of joint actions of municipalities on
industry development in the region;
standards for the provision of cemeteries and crematoria
municipality;
standards for the logistics of cemeteries,
pantheons, crematoria.
Municipal level
This is the main level at which the development of the ritual and funeral sphere and its functioning takes place.
Municipal Administration:
Approves the rules and procedures for the operation of cemeteries, crematoria,
pantheons;
Creates specialized services for funeral matters;
Coordinates the activities of all ritual and funeral organizations
on the territory of the municipality;
Deals with issues of reconstruction and expansion
cemeteries, crematoria, pantheons, tombs;
Decides to transfer them to a management company for
organization of their activities;
Controls the activities of cemeteries, crematoria, pantheons.
The municipal administration resolves social issues,
related to ritual and funeral services:
burial of unidentified bodies, deceased poor citizens;
production of tombstones;
issuance of social benefits;
preservation of military and memorial burial sites.
Exceptions from the listed functions at the local level of government
The administrations of these cities, in accordance with the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business,” themselves determine on their territory the degree of division of functions between government bodies of the city and local government.
The main principles that apply here are:
All cemeteries are administratively subordinate to a specialized state unitary enterprise of the city;
The city has unified regulatory documentation for the entire ritual and funeral sphere, approved by the city administration or the City Duma;
A unified management system for all cemeteries;
A unified system and procedure for creating city specialized services for funeral matters.
Control over the work of cemeteries and city specialized services on funeral matters is carried out jointly by the territorial administration, Rospotrebnadzor, territorial and sectoral authorities of the city administration.
2.4. Execution of state guarantees
It is urgent to solve the problem of the actual implementation of state guarantees during the burial of deceased citizens. Federal legislation defines several such guarantees, but their implementation and financing is transferred to local governments:
guarantees of burial of the deceased taking into account his will,
expressed during life, and the wishes of relatives;
guarantees of financial and other assistance for burial
deceased;
sanitary and environmental requirements for the selection and maintenance of sites
burials;
the basics of organizing a funeral business in the Russian Federation as
independent type of activity.
Table 1
Volume of funeral services in the Russian Federation
|
№ |
Years |
Number of deaths thousand people |
Sales volume of funeral services thousand rubles. |
The volume of funeral services per 1 deceased ruble. |
Social benefits per 1 deceased |
|
|
Rub. |
As a % of the cost of the funeral |
|||||
|
1 |
1997 |
2016 |
2669 |
1324 |
834,9 |
63,1 |
|
2 |
1998 |
1989 |
288 |
1448 |
834,9 |
58,7 |
|
3 |
1999 |
2144 |
4204 |
1961 |
834,9 |
42,6 |
|
4 |
2000 |
2225 |
5227 |
2350 |
834,9 |
35,5 |
|
5 |
2001 |
2255 |
6842 |
3034 |
1000 |
33,0 |
|
6 |
2002 |
2332 |
8734 |
3745 |
1000 |
26,7 |
|
7 |
2003 |
2366 |
11200 |
4700 |
1000 |
21,3 |
|
8 |
2004 |
2298 |
14500 |
6310 |
1000 |
15,8 |
The amount of social benefits has not been revised over the past 5 years and remains at the level of 1.0 thousand rubles.
If in 1997 the average cost of one funeral exceeded the amount of social benefits by 1.6 times, then in 2004 it had already become 6.3 times more.
Thus, the fulfillment of the guarantee established by the state is transferred to the economic entity, which naturally tries to avoid it. In practice, this is what happens. In some cases, local authorities, citing Decree of the President of Russia No. 1001 of June 29, 1996, “On guarantees for citizens when providing burial services for the dead,” literally force enterprises to provide services free of charge. As a result, the rights of:
a citizen who has been provided with guarantees (benefits) by the state, but he will not always be able to take advantage of them, because the service does not want to operate at a loss;
a specialized service for funeral matters, as an economic entity, which is forced to perform work and services at a loss, without proper compensation, which is contrary to current legislation.
2.5. Relationships between enterprises of different forms of ownership
The formation of specialized services on funeral matters in accordance with the law of the Russian Federation “On burial and funeral business” is entrusted to local governments, and in the years. Moscow and St. Petersburg for government bodies. The organizational and legal form of services is not defined by law. According to established practice, the status of a specialized service is given to ritual and funeral enterprises of various organizational and legal forms, including: private, municipal, and state. There is constant interaction between specialized services and state (municipal) government bodies, in particular with the civil registry offices (departments). Interaction is also carried out with government healthcare institutions, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rospotrebnadzor, etc.
The interaction of state (municipal) enterprises of the ritual and funeral sphere (as a rule, these are cemeteries) with business companies and partnerships that accept orders for ritual and funeral services is carried out on contractual terms. Orders are executed on the basis of cooperation between private and public enterprises in the industry, in accordance with the concluded agreement between them.
Common practice: the order is accepted by a private company with the status of a specialized service. It also sells items for ritual and funeral purposes, provides funeral hall services, and hearse transport services. On the territory of the cemetery, the execution of the order for the burial of the coffin and urn is transferred to the municipal (state) enterprise.
The Law of the Russian Federation “On burial and funeral business”, Article 17, paragraph 6 provides for certification of ritual and funeral services . Thus, objects and materials used during burial (coffins, urns, wreaths, embalming agents, etc.) are allowed to be used only if there is a certificate confirming their sanitary, hygienic and environmental safety.
However, in practice this rule hardly works. Through the interaction of public and private structures, certification should be fully operational and become a powerful lever for improving the quality of ritual and funeral services.
Based on Article 27 of the same Federal Law, Trustee (expert) councils on funeral matters can be formed in the regions, which may include representatives of municipal and/or state government bodies; municipal (state) and private enterprises of the ritual and funeral sphere; public and religious organizations. Such a Council takes part in the discussion of all documents on the development and functioning of the system of ritual and funeral services before their adoption by the relevant governing bodies. Thus, it should be ensured (as conceived by the developers of the Federal Law) the joint participation of private and state (municipal) structures in the development and adoption of all the main regulatory and directive documents regulating the activities of enterprises in the industry. But since this article of the law is advisory in nature, such Councils have not been created in the vast majority of municipalities. In the minority of cases where they are created, their activities are formal.
Logistics support
In developed European countries, the share of cremation reaches 80-90%. In St. Petersburg and Moscow it is about 50%. In the Russian Federation, the cremation rate is less than 7%. This situation is due to the extremely low number of crematoria themselves. Russia lags significantly behind not only developed countries, but also many developing countries in this indicator. For example, in countries such as Mexico, Colombia and Sri Lanka, there are 1.5 - 2.0 million people per existing crematorium, while in our country this figure is 21.6 million.
Compared to Europe, the situation can be called catastrophic, since there is a crematorium in almost every locality with a population of more than 100 thousand.
World practice shows that there is no alternative to widespread cremation. Administrations of many regions are already forced to agree with the correctness of this conclusion. In megacities and highly urbanized areas, there is practically no free land left for cemeteries, which makes burial in the ground problematic. This is also relevant for some regions, individual territories due to natural and climatic conditions (permafrost, swampiness, seasonal flooding, increased seismicity, complex terrain, etc.).
If the number of cremations is brought to the minimum required level (according to experts, no less than 40-45%), then the regions will have a real opportunity to solve the problem of shortage of land resources. City residents will have the opportunity to significantly save their expenses, because... a range of funeral services with cremation is 20-30% cheaper.
On the way to the necessary development of cremation, there is the following obstacle set of unresolved problems:
lack of the necessary amount of public and private investment, due to the fact that the latest edition of the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business” placed responsibility for burial on municipalities without solving the problem of sources of appropriate financial resources;
acute shortage necessary qualified personnel with the necessary basic training, since there is no corresponding government order and, as a result, the system of their education and training, as well as the negative warning existing in public opinion in this area of work;
insufficient provision of relevant regulatory documentation (especially on medical and environmental aspects), associated with the lack of funding for the corresponding area of applied scientific research.
Investments in the industry
The existing system of financing the material and technical base and creating the necessary infrastructure for ritual and funeral purposes, based on the allocation of funds from the state or local budgets, does not ensure their proper development and normal functioning. Often, as already mentioned, there is not enough money even for improvement and maintenance existing cemeteries and crematoria, not to mention the construction of new infrastructure facilities.
Until October 2003, the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business” identified the following sources of financing for the industry:
funds from the federal budget, funds from the budgets of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, funds from local budgets;
off-budget funds, as well as trust funds intended for funeral business;
other sources not prohibited by the legislation of the Russian Federation and constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
At the same time, the transfer of powers was not provided with appropriate financial resources from the federal budget. In addition, mandatory norms for financing the funeral industry for regional and local budgets were not established by the relevant Federal Law. This has further exacerbated the problems of chronic underfunding as capital construction new ones, as well as maintaining existing infrastructure facilities, especially cemeteries, in decent condition. In fact, the solution to the entire complex of the most acute problems mentioned above is entrusted to the enterprises of the industry. At the same time, their own capabilities are not able to provide the necessary minimum of funds even to maintain the existing infrastructure in such prosperous cities as Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The problem of shortage of land for cemeteries is becoming increasingly acute. It is especially felt when creating new cemeteries for large cities. Each piece of land currently has its own owner and has a price. The closer to the city and transport arteries, the more expensive the land. However, cemeteries, as is known, should be created within reasonable distances from the city and with convenient access to them.
This or that city is forced to pay the owner for the land that is intended to create a cemetery, 9 or more million rubles per 1 hectare. This is the so-called “compensation” for lost profits when alienating land for a cemetery and removing it from forest fund or from agricultural circulation.
Considering that in addition to the specified “compensation”, other expenses will be required:
the cost of 1 hectare of land when equipped for a cemetery is 3-5 million rubles;
additional costs per 1 hectare of land associated with development
a new cemetery (construction of roads, interchanges, environmental complexes) amounts to another 5-6 million rubles.
Not every city will be able to find such funds, although new cemeteries are still required. Therefore, authorities sometimes take the path of creating such facilities on plots of land that are not very suitable for cemeteries, in places quite remote (up to 40-60 km) from the city and with not very good access. You have to save on everything. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to ensure the quality of ritual and funeral services.
It should be recognized that at this stage of development, the transition to the functioning of funeral service organizations on the terms of self-financing and self-sufficiency is not acceptable for Russia. This is not possible to achieve due to the low standard of living of most of the population. Therefore, responsibilities for financing the design and capital construction of infrastructure facilities in full, as well as the maintenance and improvement of existing facilities, must be partially assumed by the state, in accordance with the standards requiring development for the regions.
Standards for capital investments and current financing need to be developed based on a generalization of experience and established practice of the territories. The basis for the development of such indicators can be the activities of regional authorities and the funeral complex in the cities. St. Petersburg, Moscow and Ivanovo. Where the situation is most favorable.
Differences between the industry and other service sectors
When organizing service, professional specialists invariably take into account the characteristics of the services provided, the characteristics of customers, and the characteristics of objects and subjects of service.
3.1. When organizing service
The customer of funeral services is a special category, fundamentally different from customers in other types of services. As a rule, citizens, having taken responsibility for organizing the burial of a deceased relative or loved one, does not represent the entire scope of burial work, the specifics of services, since usually it does not have a realexperience of such work. At the same time, such a citizen:
- is in a state of stress - he is in grief loss of a loved one,
a loved one and he does not always adequately perceive the order and practice
the services he undertook to organize;
-
does not know all the rules for providing funeral services, he
"illiterate" in this regard, does not know his rights and obligations, does not
knows relevant laws, regulations, rules, in the field
funeral business;
believes everything that the funeral representative tells him
ordering services for funeral services: which one is better to order?
a coffin or a wreath, how to organize a farewell ritual, what are the prices for services,
how to organize a funeral;
understands the need to hold the funeral within three days, and
for Muslims - within 24 hours;
borrow the necessary amount to carry out the burial with dignity,
humanly.
But this same customer especially, the closest relatives of the deceased, two to three weeks after the funeral, returning to normalpsychological state and having received a certain “experience” of ritualservices start completely differently perceive what happened to their family during the funeral. Suddenly they find out that everything could have been organized and carried out differently, much cheaper and better. “It turned out” that other companies and there was a different coffin and better wreaths, and the diggers didn’t have to be given money. Sometimes it turns out that some work was not taken into account when ordering, and you have to pay extra for it.
Based on the above, about the characteristics of the customer of services for organizing a funeral, we can conclude that an agent or other official plays a key role when placing an order, representing the interests of the ritual organization. In other words, the funeral service employee who accepts the order and receives money for this order.
Such an employee obliged in the most detailed mannerinform the customer about all his rights and obligations, about all the benefits, about all possible options for organizing the burial process. More
In addition, such an employee is obliged to scrupulously control how the order is fulfilled, and check this in the smallest detail, for each item. In this case, it does not matter who performed this or that work - this ritual organization or another one fulfilling an order for cooperation.
Particular attention must be paid to ensuring that the customer, when accepting an order, was familiar with all (without exception!!!) types of work, which are performed during a funeral.
Funeral services, as such, have their own exclusive specificity, unlike any other services.
Funeral services must be provided and performed in relation to any service object (item of service).
Every deceased person must be buried, regardless of:
who he was during his lifetime;
living place;
What was the financial situation of his family and what financial
the situation of relatives, friends and relatives of the deceased;
What nationality, what religion (or atheist), or
foreigner.
When organizing a funeral, you cannot create queues- at
when preparing documents, you cannot force a person to wait for something and anywhere
or. You cannot demand a large number of documents, or even better
limit yourself to one or two basic documents that are necessary
to register the fact of death - a passport (birth certificate) for
registration of other government documents (stamp)
death certificate.
Time requirements when organizing a funeral are very strict. ByAccording to the traditions of various religious denominations, the deceased must beburied within 1-3 days. In this situation, the citizen who has taken upon himself
The responsibility for burying the deceased requires a lot to be done. This explains impatience and even nervousnessrelatives of the deceased when preparing documents, when placing an order for a funeral, when delivering ritual items, when a hearse arrives, etc. In all these cases it should be providedexceptional clarity and punctuality of ritual and funeral workorganization and its employees. Accordingly, the clarity of the work of government organizations and institutions that, to one degree or another, are involved in the preparation of documents in organizing the funeral must be ensured.
Maximum attention, sensitivity and friendlinessmust be ensured when issuing a medical death certificate (in medical institutions), a stamp (state) death certificate (in the registry office or local village administration). Exactly the system of “one” should work herewindows" with the presentation of one required document.
3.2. In creating a competitive environment
Funeral business is social sphere, but this is also a market industry, where supply and demand are constantly changing and influencing each other
friend. In this regard, the range of services is significantly expanding,
is being updated. Citizens are offered a wide variety of services, taking into account
their material capabilities and ideas about the organization of ritual
service. Like any commercial organization in a market environment, enterprises, firms, organizations providing funeral services set as their goal to make a profit from their activities, i.e. from the sale of funeral products and services.
Providing funeral services to the population for them is a business that is carried out under the following conditions:
Real sustainable demand of the population for products and services for ritual and funeral purposes.
Competition, which assumes that it survives (remains in the market)
the strongest, and the weak leave.
Real struggle for information about potential customers, i.e.
the company must know about all the facts of death of people and promptly offer its services to relatives.
Mandatory availability of information in accordance with the law of the Russian Federation “On the Protection of Consumer Rights”, which indicates: the name of the organization, its organizational and legal form; range of services, their quality, price; materials used in the production of products; forms and terms of provision of services; guarantees to customers.
Here the principles are:
A) Minimum required set funeral services should be
provided to all interested citizens at a very affordable price. With that
so that even low-income citizens can order such a range of services.
b) At the request of the customer any services must be provided And
products for ritual purposes at a price that can be paid
customer.
The number of orders per year for the burial of the dead in each settlement is quite constant, as is the number of deaths (on average 1.2 - 1.3%) from the population.
A fairly stable and predictable number of deaths per year in a given village, region, city determines and constant number of orders for burial, regardless of the number of ritual and funeral organizations, the number of agents working in them and placing funeral orders.
Conclusion : number of funeral companies that dealfuneral arrangements should also be limited, some optimal size for a given settlement. At the same time, their activities must be strictly regulated and controlled by state authorities and local governments. When organizing a funeral, too much competition will only do harm.
Competition among funeral companies involved in organizing and
holding a funeral has its own characteristics and, accordingly, should also be limited. In particular:
advertising should be discreet, respectful. Can't be allowed
aggressiveness of advertising;
cannot be posted promotional materials in government agencies
management, in health care facilities and those places where is the registration of any
documents related to the funeral (registry offices, hospitals, military registration and enlistment offices,
clinics). In these places must be placed, complete and reliable
information about all (equally) ritual organizations of a given
regions that have the status of a specialized service;
must be clearly divided information about funeral services andadvertising about them.
- you cannot poach already accepted orders from the person responsible fororganization of the funeral. If the order has already been accepted, completed and paid for, then another company should not interrupt it or lure the customer to itself.
A proposal has been repeatedly made to formulate a code of honor for organizations and firms working in the funeral business.
Due to the limited number of orders in this area
for funerals, funeral companies should pay great attention
quality of service and expansion of the range of services. Wherein
the supply of new services should determine their demand, because customer about
many services he doesn’t even realize. This means ritual funeral
organizations should not be limited to organizing the funeral itself, but can provide various services after the burial, including the organization of memorial ceremonies, wakes on the 9th - 40th day, after 6 months, etc.
3.3. In organizing infrastructure and using land
The cemetery, the main infrastructure object, is a special urban planning object that is not similar to any housing and communal services or consumer services facility.
Characteristic features of the cemetery:
- hiscan't be demolished cannot be used for purposes other than burying dead people;
- as an urban planning object, Located on a separate plot of land, it needs constant care and landscaping work. It must be constantly maintained in a form convenient for citizens to visit and at the same time convenient for carrying out new burials, to maintain burial sites in proper condition;
- should work"(i.e. maintain the ability to new
burials) for an infinitely long time, 100-200-300 or more years. Examples of famous European cemeteries show that this is quite possible. In Russia there are also similar cemeteries in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities;
this is a place of worship in memory of relatives who have left us and
loved ones and it must constantly meet this function, be able
accept any number of visitors, including on days of mass visits in
Easter holidays;
performs a recycling function bodies of the deceased.
Accordingly, it must meet the strictest sanitary standards
requirements. In particular, there should be sanitary protection zones, as well as moral protection zones. This is especially true for city cemeteries,
when residential buildings came very close to the cemetery;
accommodation must take into account their specifics and respond
a number of requirements, in particular to be at a distance sufficiently accessible for citizens to visit from the settlement and at the same time not to disturb the peace of residents of nearby houses;
- should provide the widest possible range
services, both during burials and when visiting burial sites, care for grave structures. Modern cemeteries are increasingly approaching in their functionality to objects of the “Funeral House” type; there are such examples in Yekaterinburg, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ivanovo.
Ritual hall (House) of farewell with the deceased also has its own specifics. The commonly used theaters or concert halls are not always suitable for this purpose. Such a ritual farewell hall should perform several functions, including:
- have a room for preserving the body of the deceased before the funeral; a store of wreaths, flowers and other ritual supplies; catering unit; music department;
such a hall should allow conduct as a civil funeral servicegoodbyes with the deceased, and a religious and military memorial service;
the farewell hall should not be located on the hospital premises, incenter cities or not in a residential area so as not to morally traumatize the residents of nearby houses with the sight of endless funerals, hearses, people in mourning clothes, etc.;
- the hall should be open around the clock to receive bodies of the dead, including from other cities;
-
the hall should not be expensive, including small sizes for
a small number of participants in the farewell procedure;
- hall decoration should be strict and at the same time universal, meaning to ensure the farewell procedure for the deceased of various nationalities and religions, to ensure respect for the traditions and norms of the relevant groups of participants in the farewell ritual.
3.4. The role of public organizations
The formation of an external environment favorable for business development is impossible without effective interaction with the authorities and the latter’s interest in implementing the proposals of the business community. This requires a mutually acceptable compromise between government and business. In these conditions, public organizations of entrepreneurs play the main role, since only they can serve as a kind of bridge for the counter-movement of interests of both government and business. That is why, when finding the above balance, the business association needs to take the position of not only entrepreneurs, but also the state. Thus, to effectively represent the interests of business, it is necessary to look for ways to implement them through the prism of the interests of society and the state.
Formally, both at the federal level and in the regions, there are a sufficient number of public organizations uniting funeral service enterprises. The problem is with the number of participants in the vast majority of such institutions. For example, no more than 10-12% of companies are united in business. The majority of public organizations at the federal level (Union of Funeral Organizations and Crematoria, Corporation of Funeral Organization Managers) are state-owned enterprises. This is a fundamental difference between the funeral industry and other sectors of the economy. An explanation for this fact can be found in the fact that it is they who bear the brunt of solving problems, while other government structures and authorities, both at the federal level and in most regions, have withdrawn from solving them.
Public organizations at the regional level are extremely weak in their resource capabilities, and therefore cannot create effective tools for defending their interests. This is one of the components negative attitude entrepreneurs to join public organizations.
Most successful representatives of small and medium-sized businesses, moreover, due to the individualism of the process itself entrepreneurial activity, tend to believe that they are able to solve the whole range of problems themselves. Sobering up, and with it an understanding of the usefulness of public organizations, occurs in situations provoked by rash actions of the authorities, threatening serious losses, and more often the threat of bankruptcy.
And yet, the most important component when deciding to join public organizations is the attitude of the authorities themselves towards them. Often, many of its representatives complain about the existing weakness of institutions civil society, underdevelopment of the system of civilized relations between government, business and society. At the same time, forgetting or remaining silent that the main content of the term “civil society” is the direct participation of citizens, their public associations in the formation of government policies and the creation of methods for monitoring the practical implementation of such policies that have received public approval. This approach, when a public organization, on its own initiative and with the help of its specialists, makes proposals on a fundamental issue that determines the success of economic development and the possibility of a breakthrough in solving pressing social problems, is a test of the sincerity of the declared intentions.
Having analyzed the current situation, we can conclude that neither at the federal nor at the regional levels there is currently an effective system for taking into account the opinions and interests of entrepreneurs when making even laws and management decisions that directly affect business. An attempt to create such a mechanism in Article 27 of the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business” did not have practical success, since the creation of appropriate coordinating centers - Trustee (supervisory) councils on funeral matters was not mandatory for the executive power of the constituent entities of the federation and municipalities. In addition, the procedure for the formation and empowerment of the above Councils is given to the level of regional legislation. As a consequence, even the few created bodies do not have any significant positive impact. There is no analysis of the consequences of the adoption of the above legal acts. This often leads to results that are directly opposite to those expected by the authorities.
All of the above applies to the situation in Russia as a whole, but in the funeral services industry this situation has given rise to a situation leading, in the very near future, to an acute socio-economic crisis. In advanced countries, the dialogue between government and business is taken seriously not from abstract considerations of the ideals of democracy and civil society, but from a pragmatic approach that allows for maximum benefits for society
For change negative situation There is a proven recipe for the formation of appropriate institutions for interaction between government and business. In many developed countries, in the interests of developing civil society structures, they do not hesitate to use coercive methods. For example, in Germany an entrepreneur undertakes to produce statutory contributions to a public organization. His freedom lies in the independence of choosing the recipient of contributions.
Foreign experience
4.1. National characteristics of the organization of funeral services
From the countries of the former socialist community, the experience of organizing funeral services in the Czech Republic deserves attention. Its distinctive feature is the centralized provisioncitizens a range of services and funeral supplies in only oneinstitution - in a funeral home, which is called a “funeral service", complete liberation of citizens who have suffered bereavement from all worries associated with organizing a funeral, manufacturing and installation monument.
It is due to the centralization of services that Czech funeral homes manage to repeatedly increase their profits.
The funeral service provides citizens with more than 40 types of services, including providing hotel and meals for people who come to the funeral from other places of residence, and a return train or bus ticket. The clothing industry specifically produces inexpensive clothing for the dead. Unlike funeral supply stores in the cities of our country, ritual supplies and objects are not sold in funeral homes in the Czech Republic and their samples are not displayed. A set of funeral supplies is delivered to the location of the deceased. Preserving the dead until burial is not practiced either in residential buildings or in hospitals. From residential buildings and pathology departments of hospitals, the deceased are transported, unaccompanied by relatives, by special vehicles of the funeral service to the funeral hall or to the crematorium, where they are kept in a refrigerated room in coffins until the funeral. Thus, no funeral starts from home or hospital. Relatives of the deceased and other funeral participants arrive directly at the crematorium or funeral hall for a solemn farewell ceremony.
The fact that not only the legislation of the Czech Republic, but also its customs does not allow preserving the bodies of the deceased, as well as organizing a farewell from home or hospital, is very important. After all, it is in this way that the use of specialized funeral facilities (morgues, farewell halls, etc.) is maximized, which allows the owners of these facilities - funeral organizations - to receive the profit necessary for business development. At the same time, in Russia these facilities are not sufficiently used.
Mourning halls located in cemeteries are used regardless of the method of burial that follows the farewell ceremony. In some cases, after the ceremony, the procession goes to the burial place in the cemetery, in others, the coffin is taken to the nearest crematorium without the accompaniment of relatives of the deceased. From the crematorium, the urn with ashes is delivered to the cemetery, which was previously determined by relatives. The funeral urn with ashes is buried in the ground or the ashes are scattered in a special clearing in the cemetery. The radius of cremation services does not exceed 50 km.
The use of cremation is beneficial to both funeral organizations andclients. Funeral companies save valuable space in the cemetery, and cremation gives clients the opportunity to significantly reduce the cost of burying their loved ones. An innovation specific to the Czech Republic is the use of a special clearing for scattering ashes. From a business point of view, this innovation can be assessed in two ways. Of course, this brings profit without spending any time, material costs, or space in the cemetery. But on the other hand, this profit is of a one-time nature, and there is no possibility of stable income generation (for example, the columbarium is not used, but an annual fee is charged for storing the urn with the ashes of the deceased in it, etc.).
Germany, England, Sweden, Austria, and France have a high level of funeral services for the population. In England and the USA, the first stage of service is carried out in the so-called Funeral Home, in whicha range of work is being carried out to prepare the deceased, including storing them in refrigerated chambers until the funeral. The funeral home is used in two ways: in some cases, after the farewell ceremony in the funeral hall, the motorcade is sent to the cemetery to bury the coffin; in others, the funeral participants with the coffin follow in cars to the crematorium, in the funeral hall of which a solemn farewell ceremony is performed. The presence of a funeral hall in the Funeral Home and in the crematorium leads to duplication of the main (funeral hall) and auxiliary premises for funeral participants, which can be considered not rational. For Russian conditions, such ineffective useproduction space is not economically feasible.
In this case, there is a completely irrational approach to the object of ritual service - the funeral hall. After all, duplicating this object in two places (in the Funeral Home and in the Crematorium) leads to significant and practically irreparable costs. It would be much more reasonable to abandon the funeral hall in the Funeral Home and thus significantly save both on the maintenance of the funeral hall and on the personnel serving it. And since the main object in the Funeral Home is the ritual hall, then when it is closed, it would be advisable to completely simplify the Funeral Home, and this is quite a large-scale saving of funds that can be invested in other areas of the funeral business.
The funeral business in France can be considered as clear example conservation funeral traditions. In this country the death toll is mostlycremated. Relatives have the opportunity to rent a niche in the columbarium or a plot in the cemetery for a grave. The niche can be rented for 5, 10 or 25 years. There is also a target amount that is paid for the fact that the ballot box will be there permanently.
This niche rental system is economically reasonable, as it allows for a differentiated approach in terms of income level to each client.
The deceased are usually buried in family crypts, designed and built in unique style. Family crypts are one of the features of the funeral culture of France.
Burial in a crypt is the most expensive type of burial, but given centuries-old traditions, the French very often bury their loved ones in family crypts. Funeral companies in this case receive income not only from the direct burial, but also from the design of the crypt, and from caring for the crypt, and for a whole range of related services.
Cemeteries are managed and protected by the state. To avoid the appearance of random people in cemeteries, graves are cared for using a subscription fee, which is regularly paid by relatives. Grave monuments are washed, flowers are planted, fallen leaves and dry grass are removed. The sanitary period (cemetery period) is 15 years; for re-burial, permission from the director of the cemetery is sufficient.
In France there are houses of farewell. The body is taken there from the morgue and stored in a special room equipped with refrigeration chambers. There are special halls where coffins are placed and organ music is played. Relatives can stay with the deceased around the clock.
Getting acquainted with the existing standards for funeral services in such a highly developed country as Sweden, it is impossible not to note that the service organization functions smoothly and without failures. An example is the crematorium, which has been operating flawlessly since 1948.
A distinctive feature of Swedish funerary culture isorganization of the work of cemeteries (in Sweden there are almost no columbar walls anda coffin or urn is buried in the grave). A standard plot without fences is allocated for burial; the absence of fences allows saving up to 20% of the cemetery area, which is allocated for adjacent paths. The burial plot is leased for a period of 25 years.
The idea of no fences on graves is simply brilliant from an economic point of view, because... allows you to save as much as 20% of the territory of cemeteries,
but by using columbariums, profits could be further maximized.
The cost of a standard funeral ceremony is approximately 2 thousand US dollars. This amount includes: clothing for the deceased, sanitary treatment of the body, transportation, paperwork, obituary in the newspaper, funeral service, wreath, coffin or urn for ashes.
Sweden is an almost perfect example of how to achieve high profits using the maximum number of services. In fact, the entire main list of services is presented here, but related services are completely absent (booking tickets for out-of-town relatives of the deceased, organizing funeral dinners, etc.), and this is lost profit.
Cemeteries occupy a special place in the organization of funeral services in Germany. The primary, primordial function of a cemetery is to serve as a burial place for the dead, to remain a center of memory of them.
According to the Federal Cemetery Regulations, certain area standards apply throughout Germany. different types burial plots. In accordance with the public nature of cemeteries, issues of planning, maintaining order, expanding the area and others are within the competence of utilities. In this case, minor deviations from the norm are allowed, regulated by local authorities.
Different types of plots are designed for different income levels of clients, and any change in the layout of the burial plot is accompanied by an additional fee being charged to the local budget.
The development of the funeral business is impossible without close interaction between funeral services from different countries. At the same time, this is a kind of barrier to entry into the ritual business for random and unscrupulous people, both ethically and financially.
Considering foreign experience in organizing a funeral business, one cannot help but pay attention to the organization of personnel training. In countries,members of an international funeral organization, educationput on industrial rails. High requirementsprofessionalism of employees at any level are strictly observed andcontrolled.
Of course, the Russian funeral business needs to integrate into the international and funeral market. The main thing that the international funeral business in Russia can offer is the latest technologies and developments in the funeral business, as well as foreign investment in the funeral business in Russia. When these goals are achieved, Russia will certainly implement all its economic projects in the funeral business, both at the state level and at the level of market entities.
World practice in the development of funeral services shows that without the widespread development of cremation, this important social problem has no alternative solution.
4.2. The practice of cremation and the activities of crematoria
A crematorium (from the Latin "cremo" - to burn) is a ritual building designed to commit the bodies (remains) of the dead (dead) to fire (cremation).
Cremation reduces the burial area by 100 times, and the period of mineralization of remains is reduced from 20 years to 1 hour.
The first crematoria were built in Italy, in Milan in 1875 (joint development of German and Italian engineers). Already in the 20s of the last century, in many European cities, even with a population of less than 100 thousand inhabitants, it was considered possible to have a crematorium, and in settlements with a population of over 110 thousand, the presence of a crematorium has long been a city-planning sanitary norm.
In 1874, the International Federation of Cremation was formed, the main purpose of which to this day is to familiarize the world's population with the benefits of cremation from the point of view of economics, ecology, hygiene, sanitation, ethics and aesthetics. Today the Cremation Federation unites 21 countries, including Russia.
Before the revolution in Russia, the first crematorium was built in Vladivostok using a Japanese-made oven, and the first crematorium in proletarian Russia opened in Petrograd in 1927.
Today, cremation is widespread in North America (there are about a thousand crematoria in the USA), Europe, and is mandatory in the countries of Southeast Asia. There are 356 crematoria in England; in the Czech Republic - 80; in China - 1300; in France -700 (virtually in every city). There are 14,300 crematoria around the world. Cremation is most widely represented in Japan (98% of all deaths are cremated), the Czech Republic (95%), and the UK.
(69%), in Denmark (68%), in Sweden (64%), in Switzerland (61%), in Australia (48%), in Holland (46%).
Advantages of the cremation complex:
Saving space, reducing the land allocated for traditional burial in the ground by 50-100 times, rationalizing the use of land resources.
There is no threat to the health and life of the population from cemeteries -
columbariums, improving the ecology of the city, reducing sanitary and environmental tension.
Reducing the customer's costs by 25-40% for organizing a funeral compared to a traditional funeral.
Ensuring the safety of columbar burials, monuments, obelisks in the columbar park, eliminating cemetery vandalism.
Expanding the list of funeral services provided to the population
maximum provision of rights to citizens to free choice type of burial provided for by Russian legislation.
Increasing the artistic and aesthetic level of funerals, bringing spirituality into the funeral rite through the participation of clergy of different faiths in it.
the possibility of locating cemeteries with urn burials in the ground, with new methods of organizing and zoning the territory, landscaping, landscaping and design of burial places;
the possibility of organizing family burial plots without taking into account
registration of the deceased;
giving old, closed cemeteries a “second” life through the organization of “subburials” of urns with ashes in existing graves.
Social significance of the crematorium.
5. Rationale for changes in government policy
In the previous period, the state constantly tried to reduce its role in the economy as a cure for all economic ills. But economic deregulation did not lead to the expected modernization of the national economy. The free market cannot determine all of society's needs and preferences. These market disadvantages include:
- the market does not contribute to the conservation of non-renewable resources;
- not interested in effective environmental protection;
- cannot regulate correct use resources belonging to the whole society;
- does not create incentives for the production of goods and services for collective use;
- does not guarantee the right of all citizens to work and income;
Not socially focused on production necessary goods all necessary assortment in a price niche accessible to their consumers;
- does not ensure the development of fundamental research in science;
- subject to unstable development, which contradicts the progressive development of society.
The decline in the Russian economy in the 1990s was unprecedented in peacetime. only confirms the opinion of modern science. This was mainly due to the deeply erroneous opinion of the country's leadership of that time about the incompatibility of methods of state regulation and market mechanisms. While an analysis of world experience convincingly indicates a clearly defined trend in the development of advanced countries associated with the strengthening of interaction between market self-regulation and state and municipal planning.
Participants in parliamentary hearings on the topic: “On the practice of applying the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Affairs”, deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, representatives of the federal executive authorities of the Russian Federation, legislative (representative) and executive authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, organizations, Scientific and educational institutions, public and religious associations, specialists in the field of funeral services, having discussed a wide range of issues related to the organization of funeral business and the practice of implementing the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business,” noted cases. that “state regulation of this activity does not yet represent an integral system. The requirements of a number of important articles of the federal law on the organization of funeral business as an independent type of activity are not met. There is no unified state policy for the development of the funeral business.”
In the field of legal regulation
At the first stage, obvious contradictions with the realities of the funeral business should be eliminated, taking into account the requirements of a market economy, and they should be put into effect by the relevant Presidential Decree.
At the second stage, before the adoption of the new Law, introduce the necessary amendments to federal legislation.
Let us formulate some basic aspects that should be taken into account when developing it. new edition:
The Law must reflect everything new, progressive, that
available in Russian and foreign funeral practice. Hemust be direct action so that it can be used in all
regions, all state, municipal and private enterprises,
firms, companies that provide funeral services to the population.
The law must determine the basic rules for the operation of these organizations.
Must be sufficiently complete to cover all sides
funeral service, so that it is not required after the adoption of the Law
develop dozens of additional instructions, regulations and other
regulatory documents.
Leave the right to the Subjects of the Federation to contribute their
specific standards based on the characteristics of the national composition
population of the region, its religious and other traditions, as well as financial
opportunities of a Subject of the Federation to expand consumer rights
funeral services.
A scientifically based conceptual framework must be proposed
apparatus, definitions are given for fundamental terms: cemetery,
crematorium, burial place, funeral services, funeral business,
family place, funeral home (as the most promising form
an enterprise providing a full range of funeral services) and so on.
Far-fetched norms and requirements should be removed, for example: size of the cemetery (40 ha), mineralization period (20 years), cemetery
period and so on.
guaranteed list of funeral services free of charge.
Replace poorly functioning free benefits with solid state support in the event of a person’s death.
7. It is necessary to clearly define what the main form isstate regulation of the development of the funeral business isformation of a system of specialized services on issuesfuneral service. Enterprises and organizations of any organizational and legal forms provided for by the Civil Code of the Russian Federation must have the right to become such a service. But it is necessary to determine the basic requirements for such services and the applied procedure for their formation (creation, granting the right to liquidate, etc.).
Needs legislative reinforcement and creation procedure,
operation and improvement of cemeteries; procedure for allocating land for
cemetery and compensation for its value to the land owner; translation procedure
agricultural land or forest land into land,
transferred for cemeteries. It is necessary to determine what land is under
cemeteries are “land of “public use” or “historical
memorial”, which are under special protection of the State (see.
Land Code).
It is necessary to define legislatively - as a citizen, on
for what period and on what conditions is a plot of land provided for
carrying out the burial of the deceased
who owns the body of a deceased person and who has the right to accept
decision on the place and method of burial of the deceased, the place of his burial,
shape and size of the monument. The main thing must be determined - who and when
under what conditions does he have the right to remove the organs of the deceased for their use in
for scientific purposes or for transplantation into other people.
11.The practice of developing market relations in our country shows that the time has come to provide a legal basis for the participation of private capital in the development of the funeral business.
In the field of management
1. Arranging the burial of the deceased. Any deceased person must be buried with dignity, regardless of the financial capabilities of him or his loved ones who took responsibility for the burial.
2. Ensuring equal conditions for all market participants
funeral services.
3. Ensuring regulation of the funeral services market in conditions where licensing of these services has been abolished.
4. Ensure control over the activities of specialized agents
funeral services and ensure equal working conditions for them.
5. Provide funding for the design, construction of the required number of new, improvement and maintenance of existing cemeteries.
6. Ensure the development and adoption of the necessary regulatory and legal documentation in the regions. Such as:
Law “On burial and funeral business”.
Rules for the operation of cemeteries and crematoria.
Rules for preparing certification of Agents.
The procedure for creating comfortable and family-tribal places
burials, and other standard rules.
8. Ensure the creation of new, improvement and maintenance of existing military burial grounds, both in Russia and abroad.
9. Provide guarantees for the fulfillment of orders for funeral services.
10. Provide social protection to low-income citizens.
11. Overcome and eliminate the emerging shortage of land for burying the dead in coffins or urns with ashes after cremation of the dead. There should be a mechanism for using cemeteries where it works constantly. In particular, through the formation of family (ancestral) burials. Conduct, together with the Center for State Sanitary and Epidemiological Surveillance of the region, a systematic examination of all “closed” cemeteries to determine whether burial in them can be carried out with a coffin in related graves.
12. Expand production resource complexes for
cremation of the bodies of the dead.
14. Implement a set of measures to stimulate
the population to use the services of a crematorium (where they exist).
15. Create fundamentally new funeral facilities (for example, a funeral home) capable of providing services at the level of world quality standards. Similar facilities exist in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ivanovo, Yekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk.
16. Reconstruction of access roads to cemeteries and
crematoria, based on the need to increase their capacity
ability to a level that allows the use of roads without
restrictions at the peak loads associated with mass
visiting cemeteries by city residents in the spring and summer
(Easter holidays).
17. Complete improvement of all cemeteries with
creation around each of them, according to the requirements
regulatory documents, fencing, construction of administrative
household buildings with a full range of service, sanitary and
hygienic and other premises.
18. It is necessary to create a mechanism for continuous monitoring of the condition
cemeteries, their regular assessment for compliance with the requirements of regulatory documents.
19. Ensure compliance with the requirements of the current Federal Law on product certification and introduce it into the new law, as well as ensure unconditional compliance by business entities in the industry with certification of personnel training, standards of services provided and used technical means, transport and technology.
20. Implement state orders for training, advanced training, and retraining of managers, engineers, technical workers and specialists needed by the industry.
21. Provide funding for applied scientific research necessary for the industry, development of regulatory and legal documents.
22. Ensure coordination of development and efficient work industries between:
involved structures of the Government of the Russian Federation (currently about 17 departments);
relevant government structures at the federal, regional and territorial levels;
activities of enterprises of different forms of ownership.
The pre-crisis state can be avoided by restoring the management vertical that was destroyed during the reform period. In the national economic system of the RSFSR, industry management functions were performed by an independent structure within the Ministry of Construction. In the current structure of the Government of the Russian Federation, its powers corresponded to the federal service.
Based on the above, it is advisable to create an independent federal body management of the ritual complex. But in modern conditions of a market economy, it is necessary to build not only a vertical power structure, but also to coordinate with the relevant bodies of the subjects of the federation and local self-government. Considering that business entities have different forms of ownership, it is necessary to stimulate and control business to ensure guaranteed quality of services to the population.
In addition, it is necessary to take into account the enormous size of Russia’s territory and, accordingly, different natural and climatic conditions. The complexity of the territorial and administrative composition is more than 80 regions, in each of which hundreds of municipalities have been created. But it is precisely to this level that the responsibility for providing the population with the appropriate services and necessary items for conducting the ritual of seeing off their loved ones on their last journey has been transferred.
Taking into account all of the above, the creation of an industry management body in Moscow will not allow it to fully effectively ensure the solution of the above tasks facing it. Therefore, the new federal management of the ritual complex must include 7 relevant Federal Agencies, which must be created at the level of federal districts.
At the level of each federal district, it is advisable, in addition to the above, to solve the following problems:
1.Organization and holding in the center of the federal district (or in the largest cities of the district) regular (once every 2 years) exhibitions of ritual and funeral accessories, technologies, equipment, products, etc.
2. Training of employees of specialized services on issues
funeral workers, including workers, mid-level specialists,
training for business managers should cover all basic forms
education: correspondence, distance learning, additional education,
advanced training, professional retraining.
3. Carrying out scientific and practical conferences on development issues
ritual and funeral sphere. As a rule, such conferences are the most
effective when carried out during exhibitions.
4. Formation of voluntary Associations, Unions, Guilds
enterprises and entrepreneurs of the ritual and funeral sphere.
In public-private partnership
Such coordination is most appropriate through public-private partnerships as the most important tool for resolving industry problems and stimulating its development.
In relation to the ritual and funeral sphere, public-private partnership can be implemented in the following areas:
1. joint (private-public) investments in the construction of new, improvement and maintenance of existing infrastructure facilities;
2. formation of Trustee (expert) councils in the regions
regarding funeral matters ,
which include
representatives of municipal and/or state government bodies; municipal (state) and private enterprises of the ritual and funeral sphere, public and religious organizations;
3. formation of specialized services on issues
funeral business. Their creation, as already noted, in accordance with the law of the Russian Federation “On burial and funeral business” is entrusted to local governments, and in the years. Moscow and St. Petersburg for government bodies. Organizational and legal form of services by law
not determined. According to established practice, the status of a specialized service is given to ritual and funeral enterprises of various organizational and legal forms, including: private, municipal, state;
4. contractual relationships, both with enterprises of various forms of ownership, and with federal, regional and municipal authorities across the entire spectrum of economic activity in the industry;
5. organization of a certification system for services, goods, quality standards and personnel training;
6. joint development of requirements and programs for education, training and retraining, advanced training of personnel.
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Madyarova A.V., Candidate of Legal Sciences, chief consultant of the staff of the State Duma Committee on Local Self-Government.
Organizing a funeral business on the territory of a municipality has always been a rather problematic area. The situation has not changed today. The inconsistency of legislation and the related law enforcement and judicial practice “drive” local government bodies and specialized funeral services into the narrow framework of several complex and not entirely “transparent” schemes for organizing a funeral business, or force them to act “at random” - perhaps the local prosecutor or the entrepreneur will not file a complaint with the FAS Russia or the court. Our explanations on solving the main problems arising in this area are addressed to officials and local governments.
According to clause 22, part 1, art. 14, paragraph 17, part 1, art. 15, paragraph 23, part 1, art. 16 of Federal Law No. 131-FZ of October 6, 2003 “On the general principles of organizing local self-government in the Russian Federation” (hereinafter referred to as Federal Law No. 131-FZ) issues of local importance for all types of municipalities include the organization of the provision of funeral services and the maintenance of burial places.
The powers of local government bodies to resolve these issues of local importance in accordance with Federal Law No. 8-FZ of January 12, 1996 “On burial and funeral affairs” (hereinafter referred to as Federal Law No. 8-FZ) include:
- determination of requirements for the quality of guaranteed services provided during burial free of charge, as well as their cost (in agreement with the relevant departments Pension Fund RF, Foundation social insurance of the Russian Federation, as well as government bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation);
- determining the cost of services provided during the burial of persons whose identity has not been established or who do not have persons who have assumed the responsibility for burial;
- determining the size of a free plot of land to accommodate a burial site and its provision (except for the Federal War Memorial Cemetery);
- suspension or termination of activities at the burial site, taking measures to eliminate violations and eliminate the adverse impact of the burial site on the environment and human health, as well as to create a new burial site in case of violation of sanitary and environmental requirements for the maintenance of the burial site;
- determination of the order of activity, creation and maintenance of public cemeteries, as well as religious, military, military memorial cemeteries when they are under the jurisdiction of local governments;
- survey of the area in order to identify possible unknown burials before carrying out any work in the areas of military operations, concentration camps and possible burials of victims of mass repressions, designation and registration of burial places, and, if necessary, reburial of the remains of those killed when old military and previously unknown burials are discovered;
- creation and maintenance of walls of grief for the burial of urns with the ashes of the dead, organization and determination of the order of operation of crematoria;
- creation of specialized services for funeral matters, determination of the order of their activities;
- creation of trustee (supervisory) boards under local governments to organize control over compliance with legislation in the field of burial and funeral business.
Federal Law No. 8-FZ, adopted in 1996, was based on the legal realities of the post-Soviet era, the initial stage of reforming the social and legal systems, and therefore does not take into account all the problems arising in this area today. In recent years, local governments have faced a number of problems in organizing funerals and providing funeral services. Among them, the most acute are conflicts (contradictions) of legal norms, gaps in the law, and the lack of clear legal regulation on a number of the following issues:
- status of burial places, legal regime of cemetery lands, permissible forms of ownership of burial grounds, the possibility of transferring municipal cemetery lands to economic management, operational management, lease, etc.;
- legal status of a specialized service for funeral matters (as a local government body, municipal organization or any economic entity endowed with this status);
- body or organization authorized to allocate burial places, register burials, establish operating hours for burial places, incl. regulation of access to the cemetery territory;
- legal regime of land plots provided to citizens for burial at burial sites, etc.
In the sphere of organizing funeral business and providing funeral services, the most pressing questions are about the legal nature of this activity and about the delimitation of powers and functions of business entities.
In accordance with Art. 128 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (hereinafter referred to as the Civil Code of the Russian Federation), services are the object of civil rights, in accordance with Federal Law dated July 26, 2006 N 135-FZ “On the Protection of Competition” (hereinafter referred to as Federal Law N 135-FZ) - a product. The organization of funerals and the provision of related services are classified as types of economic activity (clause 93.03 of OKVED OK 029-2007, OKVED OK 029-2001), and the services themselves, including the maintenance of cemeteries and other burial places, are products of this type of economic activity (OKPD OK 034-2007). Thus, funeral services fall within the scope of civil law regulation and are subject to, among other things. antimonopoly legislation.
Article 15 of Federal Law N 135-FZ establishes a number of prohibitions on acts and actions (inactions) restricting competition of federal executive authorities, state authorities of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, local governments, and other bodies or organizations performing the functions of these bodies. In particular, in accordance with Part 1 of this article, the following are prohibited:
- unjustified interference with the activities of business entities, incl. by establishing requirements for goods or business entities not provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation;
- establishing prohibitions or introducing restrictions regarding the free movement of goods in the Russian Federation, other restrictions on the rights of business entities to sell, purchase, otherwise acquire, exchange goods;
- establishing for purchasers of goods restrictions on the choice of business entities that provide such goods.
In Part 2 of Art. 15 of Federal Law No. 135-FZ establishes a ban on vesting state authorities of constituent entities of the Russian Federation and local self-government bodies with powers, the exercise of which leads or may lead to the prevention, restriction, or elimination of competition, except in cases established by federal laws.
Part 3 Art. 15 of Federal Law No. 135-FZ prohibits the combination of the functions of state authorities and local self-government and the functions of economic entities, as well as the vesting of economic entities with the functions and rights of these bodies.
Thus, local government bodies, when exercising the powers entrusted to them to organize the provision of funeral services and maintain burial places, incl. by creating specialized organizations, does not have the right to restrict competition, freedom of access to the funeral services market of other economic entities, or combine the functions of economic entities and local government bodies.
Courts and the Federal Antimonopoly Service (hereinafter referred to as FAS Russia) often consider the following as the powers of local government bodies:
- provision of burial places;
- inventory and registration of burials;
- establishing operating hours for municipal cemeteries.
In this regard, the indicated authorities conclude that the implementation of the above functions cannot be assigned to an economic entity (municipal or other organization for funeral business and funeral services)<1>. It’s hard to agree with this, and here’s why.
<1>See, for example: Resolution of the Thirteenth Arbitration Court of Appeal dated December 3, 2009 in case No. A42-4731/2009.
Provision of burial places and their registration
Firstly, the allocation (provision) of plots for burials and registration of burials are not named by Federal Law No. 8-FZ among the powers of local governments in the field of burial and funeral business, which suggests that these functions are not considered by them as authority powers.
Secondly, from Part 2 of Art. 7, parts 1 and 3 art. 18 of Federal Law No. 8-FZ it follows that it is the specialized service for funeral matters (i.e., the organization created by local government bodies) that is authorized to make decisions on the allocation of land plots for burial in the territory of public cemeteries (and the specialized service, as will be indicated below - within the meaning of the law, not a local government body, but an organization created by them).
At the same time, according to Part 1 of Art. 7 and part 5 of Art. 16 of Federal Law No. 8-FZ, land plots for burial are guaranteed to citizens and provided free of charge, and the norms for such provision are established by local governments. At the same time, Federal Law No. 8-FZ establishes a set of criteria for choosing a site in a cemetery:
- taking into account the will of the deceased;
- the proximity of the place he has chosen next to the burial place of a previously deceased close relative or spouse;
- availability of necessary free space;
- in other cases, the choice is made taking into account the place of death, the availability of a free plot of land at the burial place indicated by the deceased, or taking into account the services of the deceased to society and the state.
Thus, a specialized service is obliged to allocate a corresponding plot of land to any citizen free of charge, in compliance with established selection criteria and procedures.
Burial places act as a property complex; accordingly, their management, incl. the maintenance of burial sites and the allocation of land plots are, by their nature, not functions of power (the powers of local governments to resolve issues of local importance), but the powers of the owner to manage property. At the same time, the owner is bound by certain rules established by law, SanPiN, etc. The authority function of the local government body to dispose of land “ends” at the moment the local government bodies make a decision to organize a burial site on a land plot and allocate it for a cemetery.
The provision of burial places is fundamentally different from the provision of land plots to citizens in the manner established by land legislation. So, in accordance with land legislation, land plots for burial are provided to all citizens without exception on an equal basis and, as a rule, free of charge; in addition, plots of land are provided to citizens not for ownership or use<2>. Thus, to provide a burial place, no administrative decision related to the transfer of rights to a land plot is required. This activity is carried out as part of the ongoing business activities of managing the cemetery. This approach is also confirmed by some court decisions, based on the fact that the provision of burial space on the territory of the cemetery is carried out as part of the operation and maintenance of the cemetery and does not fall within the executive powers of local government bodies<3>.
<2>It must be said that the question of what legal right and, accordingly, with or without the conclusion of any special agreement, land plots are provided for burial is another gap in the legislation on burial and funeral business, but according to established practice, the provision of land plots to citizens for burial does not entail the emergence of any real or obligatory rights to it.
<3>Resolution of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Volga-Vyatka District dated December 28, 2005 N A11-2363/2005-K2-18/138.
Thus, a plot of land for burial does not act as a commodity in the funeral services market, its provision is a public service, and vesting a specialized funeral service with the function of providing it cannot be considered as a combination of the functions of a local government body and an economic entity, entailing a restriction of competition.
In accordance with the All-Russian Classification of Products by Type of Economic Activities (OKPD OK 034-2007), services for organizing funerals and related services (code 93.03) include the following services:
- for burial and cremation (code 93.03.11);
- cemeteries for burial, including services for the purchase or rental of burial space (code 93.03.11.110);
- on the maintenance of cemeteries and other burial places (code 93.03.11.130);
- for the care of graves and other burial places, including landscaping services for cemeteries (code 93.03.11.131);
- for organizing burial or cremation (code 93.03.12.110);
- other funeral home services, including services for the sale of funeral supplies and religious funeral services (code 93.03.12.119).
Thus, the provision of burial places can be considered as an integral part of cemetery burial services.
Registration of burials is a record of burial places in which burials were made, with the purpose of their ordering and identification (inventory). It's obvious that this activity is closely intertwined with the activities of providing land plots for burial and maintaining cemeteries and, in fact, is their integral part. Unlike registration actions related to the powers of government authorities, this activity does not imply the adoption of any administrative acts and does not entail the recognition or fixation of any right or status.
Establishing operating hours for cemeteries
A cemetery is a multi-valued concept, and when it comes to establishing its operating mode, we mean a cemetery not as a property complex erected at the burial site (Article 4 of Federal Law No. 8-FZ), but as an organization (legal entity) created and whose activities are carried out on the basis constituent documents. For example , the creation of the Federal War Memorial Cemetery is accompanied by the adoption of a charter, which defines its status as a federal government institution<4>.
<4>See: Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of February 25, 2004 N 105.
Consequently, the operating mode of the cemetery - the routine of the organization as an independent economic entity - is determined in accordance with the charter either by its founder or by the organization itself.
The issue of establishing the operating hours of cemeteries also does not, by its nature, relate to the regulatory powers of state bodies or local governments. This regime must comply with the procedure for the operation of public cemeteries established by the local government on the basis of federal legislation. The operating regulations of a particular cemetery cannot establish rules that contradict these general provisions or introduce additional restrictions on access to the territory of the cemetery for individuals and legal entities, incl. other organizations providing funeral services, and for the provision of burial services and related ritual services to them.
At the same time, the very procedure for the operation of cemeteries, approved by local governments, should not limit competition in the funeral services market or infringe on the rights of individuals or legal entities, incl. the rights of organizations providing funeral services that do not have the status of a specialized funeral service to provide citizens with burial services and other services on the territory of any municipal cemetery. The “permitting” activities of specialized services in matters of funeral business should not be of an administrative-authoritative, but of a “technical” nature: the issuance of permits should be free of charge and not subject to any additional requirements (in addition to the organization having the right to engage in this activity in accordance with its status ) etc., i.e. in the process of issuing such permits, the issues that should be addressed are not the advisability of allowing an organization to enter the cemetery, but only the formal legality and compliance with the procedure for performing certain actions.
It is in this sense that the existing judicial practice should be interpreted, which recognizes as illegal the assignment of powers to specialized services to issue permits for the entry of vehicles, installation of grave monuments and similar actions<5>.
<5>See, for example: Resolutions of the FAS of the Far Eastern District dated October 25, 2007 N F03-A51/07-2/3554, FAS of the North Caucasus District dated February 21, 2007 N F08-352/2007.
Legal status of a specialized funeral service
Federal Law No. 8-FZ uses the concept of “specialized service for funeral matters”, but does not contain either a definition of this concept or a description of the legal status of this organization.
It is indicated that a specialized service for funeral matters is created by local government bodies (Articles 25, 29). The purpose of its activities is to bury the dead and provide burial services (Articles 25, 29), in particular: providing guaranteed to citizens funeral services free of charge (Article 9), burial of the deceased who have no relatives or whose identity has not been established (Article 12). This allows us to conclude that a specialized funeral service is an organization created by local governments to provide ritual services to citizens, and the specialized service itself is not a local government body.
This means that a specialized funeral service does not have the right to exercise the powers of local government bodies in the field of funeral affairs.
At the same time, the specialized service for funeral matters includes such functions as making decisions on the burial of the dead in public cemeteries (Article 18), determining the possibility of fulfilling the will of the deceased to bury his body (remains) or ashes at the burial place indicated by him (Article 7), including within the meaning of Parts 1 and 2 of Art. 7, provision of burial space. As mentioned above, often courts and antimonopoly authorities recognize the provision of burial places and other related functions (registration of burials, etc.) as authority.
As a result, a conflict arises, in the solution of which law enforcement practice is not uniform.
According to one approach, functions such as providing burial places and registering burials, being authorities, can be assigned to a specialized funeral service only if such a service does not fall under the characteristics of an economic entity (i.e. is not commercial or non-profit organization carrying out activities that generate income for it). Consequently, a specialized funeral service cannot be a municipal unitary enterprise<6>, nor a municipal autonomous institution<7>. It turns out that as a municipal organization, a specialized service can only be created in the form of a municipal budgetary institution, and even then not endowed with the right to carry out income-generating activities. Such institutions are, in particular, local government bodies, so it is sometimes proposed to assign these functions directly to local government bodies and their divisions (department of municipal services, etc.)<8>. But the creation of specialized services in the form of budgetary institutions, firstly, puts municipalities at a disadvantage, making such services obviously unprofitable, and, secondly, creates legal contradictions: this excludes the provision by such specialized services of other funeral services beyond the narrow list of established ones. the law of free services, while from the above provisions of Federal Law No. 8-FZ it follows that specialized services have the right to provide any, and not just free, funeral services. As for proposals to assign the functions of specialized services directly to local government bodies, it does not take into account that, according to Federal Law No. 8-FZ, a specialized service does not belong to local government bodies, but is created by them.
<6>See, for example: Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation dated September 23, 2008 N 12027/07. However, this does not prevent the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipalities from continuing to use this organizational and legal form. For example, in Moscow, the functions of a specialized service are performed by the State Unitary Enterprise “Ritual”, and there are no facts of response to and suppression of this “illegal activity” in the capital.
<7>
<8>Right there.
In this regard, other approaches are being developed in practice - dividing the functions of a specialized organization between several organizations: vesting power in budgetary institutions, including local governments, and providing burial services and other funeral services by placing a municipal order or identifying the organization through a competitive tender. basis<9>. This is done in a number of territories. In this case, at least two specialized services appear in the municipality - represented by a local government body and represented by an economic entity. However, the obligation of such a splitting of functions and the creation of several specialized services in each municipality does not at all follow from Federal Law No. 8-FZ, which assigned all functions simultaneously to the jurisdiction of a specialized service, and did not divide them between local government bodies and a specialized service.
<9>Letter from the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia to the mayor of Blagoveshchensk dated July 24, 2009 N PS/24493 “On consideration of the appeal.”
Finally, some courts indicate that, according to the letter of the law, a specialized funeral service is created by local government bodies, i.e. must be municipal, and it is not allowed to grant this status to another economic entity<10>.
<10>
Such contradictory approaches, encountered in practice, completely confuse the situation with determining the status and functions of a specialized service in matters of funeral affairs.
We believe that when resolving this issue, it is more correct to proceed from the following.
Firstly, as mentioned above, functions such as the provision of burial places, registration of burials, etc., by their nature are not the powers of local governments and therefore can be assigned to specialized organizations.
Secondly, Federal Law No. 8-FZ does not provide a legislative definition of the concept of “specialized service for funeral matters” and does not establish its organizational and legal form. Federal Law No. 131-FZ also does not contain the term “service”. A similar concept is not used in civil legislation. In this regard, a specialized service is not a type of organization, not a specific organizational and legal form of a legal entity, but a status assigned to an entity in connection with the performance of functions of providing ritual services guaranteed by law to citizens.
Further, according to the terminology of civil legislation, the creation of a specialized service does not necessarily mean the establishment of any municipal organization (enterprise or institution). Local governments are the founders, i.e. participate in the creation of non-municipal organizations - open joint stock companies(in the manner prescribed by the Federal Law of December 21, 2001 N 178-FZ “On the Privatization of State and Municipal Property”), and intermunicipal business companies in the form of closed joint-stock companies and limited liability companies (Article 68 of the Federal Law “On General principles of organization of local self-government in the Russian Federation").
According to clause 5.13 of the Recommendations on the procedure for funerals and the maintenance of cemeteries in the Russian Federation MDK 11-01.2002 (recommended by the Protocol of the NTS Gosstroy of Russia dated December 25, 2001 N 01-NS-22/1), specialized services for funeral matters are created in the organizational structures provided for by Russian civil legislation -legal forms and, depending on this, act on the basis of charters or regulations that do not contradict the legislative acts of the Russian Federation and its constituent entities, and are also registered in the prescribed manner.
Thus, if we proceed from the fact that a specialized service is only a certain status, reflecting the range of functions performed by an economic entity, then it should be recognized as natural that it is possible to assign this status to an entity created in any organizational and legal form<11>.
<11>A similar interpretation is shared by the FAS Russia in the above letter.
It should be especially emphasized that, according to Federal Law N 131-FZ, local government bodies are not entrusted with the provision of funeral services, but with the organization of their provision. The latter does not imply the obligation to create for these purposes any local government bodies (their structural divisions), organizations, or to finance the provision of funeral services from the local budget. Organization of the provision of services is the creation of conditions under which citizens are provided with the provision of these services, and this is possible both through specially established municipal organizations, and by attracting and stimulating business entities of non-municipal ownership. In addition, solving this issue of local importance implies legal regulation legal relations in the field of funeral business by municipal regulatory legal acts (determining the procedure for the operation of public cemeteries, establishing a list, criteria for the quality and cost of guaranteed burial services, etc.).
Therefore, if a competitive environment has been created in a municipality and there are a sufficient number of organizations providing funeral services, then there is no direct need to create municipal organizations. In this case, the status of a specialized organization can be given to the corresponding economic entities, and in one municipality there can be several such specialized organizations (for example, they can be in charge of various burial places).
If there is no competitive environment in the field of funeral business in a municipality, then in order to ensure the rights of citizens, specialized services for funeral affairs - municipal organizations - should be created. Of course, this is acceptable even if there is a functioning market for funeral services in the municipality. It is only important that the rights of other business entities are not infringed: such specialized services must, according to their purpose, be engaged in the maintenance of burial places and provide funeral services free of charge in accordance with a guaranteed list and do not have the right to interfere with access to the burial place of other organizations working in this area, including .h. providing funeral services on a paid basis.
Activities of local government bodies regarding the maintenance of burial sites
According to Art. 14 - 16 of Federal Law N 131-FZ, issues of local importance include the maintenance of burial places (they are also burial places, or cemeteries). The powers of local government bodies to resolve issues of local importance are established by Part 1 of Art. 17 Federal Law N 131-FZ.
The entrustment of such an issue of local importance as the maintenance of burial sites to local government bodies does not mean that this activity should be carried out directly by local government bodies. Moreover, according to OKPD OK 034-2007, services for the maintenance of cemeteries and other burial places are classified according to product code 93.03.11.130 by type of economic activity (class “Other personal services”, subclass “Services for organizing funerals and related services”). Accordingly, the contents of burial sites are economic activity, is a type of funeral services and the implementation of this activity directly by local governments would be contrary to the Federal Law “On the Protection of Competition”.
Entrusting local governments with the maintenance of burial sites also does not mean that this activity must necessarily be carried out by municipal organizations. According to the provisions of Part 1 of Art. 17 of Federal Law N 131-FZ, local governments independently choose legal forms for solving specific issues of local importance, in particular, they have the right to create municipal enterprises and institutions, as well as place municipal orders.
In the case of placing a municipal order, local governments can choose the most advantageous (including from the point of view of rational use and savings of local budget funds) conditions offered by applicants for budget allocations.
Due to this court decisions, according to which the maintenance of burial sites must necessarily be carried out by municipal organizations or, even more so, directly by local government bodies, seem unfounded<12>.
<12>See: Resolutions of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Ural District dated July 14, 2009 N F09-4848/09-С1 in case N A60-7979/2009-С12, the Seventeenth Arbitration Court of Appeal dated September 29, 2008 N 17AP-6840/2008-AK in case N A60 -9389/2008.
At the same time, the opposite interpretation is also unacceptable, according to which work on the maintenance of municipal cemeteries should be carried out exclusively through the placement of a municipal order<13>. The municipal order procedure is established for cases when external procurement of goods, works, and services for municipal needs is carried out at the expense of local budget funds. If, in order to resolve a particular issue of local importance in accordance with the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Federal Law of November 14, 2002 N 161-FZ “On State and Municipal Unitary Enterprises” (hereinafter referred to as Federal Law N 161-FZ) a municipal enterprise or institution has been created, which is entrusted with carrying out the relevant activities on the instructions of the owner, then there is no basis for placing a municipal order for these goods, works, services. In accordance with Art. 8 of Federal Law N 161-FZ, a municipal enterprise can be created, in particular, if necessary:
<13>See: letter from the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia to the mayor of Blagoveshchensk.
- use of property whose privatization is prohibited;
- carrying out activities in order to solve social problems (including the sale of certain goods and services at minimum prices).
Within the meaning of Federal Law No. 8-FZ, cemetery lands can only be municipal and, therefore, are not subject to privatization. Activities in the field of burial and funeral business, especially in terms of providing free services guaranteed to citizens, are of course socially significant, and maintaining cemeteries in proper condition for these purposes should also be related to solving social problems. Thus, local governments have every reason to create municipal unitary enterprises for the purpose of providing burial services and maintaining burial sites.
Legal regime of cemetery lands
Analysis judicial practice shows that in a number of cases the courts recognize as unlawful the transfer of public cemetery lands to the economic management or operational management of municipal or other organizations, as a rule, performing the functions of a specialized service in matters of funeral business<14>.
<14>Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation dated September 23, 2008 N 12027/07. And although the practice of the highest court is also not unchanged, and even more so, the decision on a specific case is not mandatory for the courts when deciding similar cases, nevertheless, the risk increases that when considering such disputes, the courts will be guided by this position of the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation (this is to the question of the prospects for judicial consideration of cases in this category). Therefore, of course, in the current circumstances, to legitimize the possibility of assigning cemetery lands to specialized services in matters of funeral business on the basis of economic management or operational management, a corresponding federal law would be necessary.
At the same time, the courts motivate such decisions by the fact that, in accordance with Art. 18 Federal Law No. 8-FZ:
- public cemeteries are under the jurisdiction of local governments and the possibility of their transfer to the jurisdiction of any economic entity is not provided for;
- lands of public cemeteries cannot be classified as lands for commercial use (on the terms of lease or economic management), otherwise this will neutralize state guarantees on the free provision of burial space to every citizen<15>.
It is difficult to agree with this position of the courts. Indeed, in accordance with Art. 18 of Federal Law No. 8-FZ, public cemeteries are under the jurisdiction of local governments, and according to Part 2 of Art. 15 of the same Federal Law No. 8-FZ, burial places (with cemeteries located on them) can be state or municipal according to their ownership. At the same time, the concepts of “maintenance” and “ownership” in the current legislation are not usually used in relation to objects, incl. land plots, therefore it is impossible to clearly establish what kind of rights of local governments are meant in this case. However, from a systematic interpretation of these provisions, we can conclude that they refer to ownership of the relevant land plots. Consequently, cemetery lands can only be in state or municipal ownership, and public cemeteries can only be municipal. This also corresponds to the provisions of Art. 50 of Federal Law N 131-FZ.
According to Art. 209, 215 Civil Code of the Russian Federation, Art. 51 of Federal Law N 131-FZ, municipal property without any restrictions can:
- be in the treasury mode of the municipality;
- be assigned to municipal enterprises or institutions with the right of economic management or operational management;
- be transferred under another property or obligation right, incl. lease right, other physical or legal entities.
With regard to municipally owned civil burial sites, the Land Code of the Russian Federation also does not establish any special rules of circulation.
This means that cemetery lands can either be in the municipal treasury or transferred into the possession and use of other legal entities (municipal enterprises and institutions or other business entities operating in the field of burial and provision of funeral services).
The transfer of lands of public cemeteries to economic management or operational management of municipal enterprises or institutions does not entail their removal from municipal property, i.e. from the jurisdiction of local governments. Municipal enterprises and institutions have special legal capacity determined by the statutory purposes of their creation and activities (Article 50 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation), own, use and dispose of the property assigned to them within the limits established by law and in accordance with the goals of their activities (Article 294 - 298 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation). Consequently, no contradiction is seen between the special purpose of public cemetery lands as intended to be provided for burial free of charge and the possibility of transferring them under the right of economic management and operational management to municipal or unitary enterprises and institutions. In this case, the municipal enterprise and institution are obliged by law to own, use and dispose of cemetery lands strictly in accordance with their intended purpose and within the framework of their statutory activities. In particular, this is exactly how - by transferring the land of cemeteries to the economic management of the State Unitary Enterprise "Ritual" - this issue was resolved in the capital, in many municipalities of the Moscow region and other constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Finally, there is positive judicial practice in this regard<16>.
<16>See, for example: Resolution of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Far Eastern District dated 08/07/2007, 07/31/2007 N F03-A51/07-1/1391 in case N A51-9728/2006-24-269.
conclusions
The current legal regulation of relations in the sphere of organizing a funeral business leads to discrepancies and, as a consequence, to the fact that different subjects of the Russian Federation and municipalities decide for themselves the issue of organizing a funeral business in different ways. Some create specialized services in the form of municipal organizations ( municipal enterprises, municipal autonomous or budgetary institutions), others assign this status to non-municipal organizations on the basis of a competition, and sometimes impose certain requirements on them (in Moscow, for example, this is a “property qualification” - at least 50% of state participation in such an organization), and sometimes both options are combined.
In some cases, the lands of cemeteries are managed and disposed of directly by local government bodies, in others, the lands are transferred for economic management or operational management to specialized services for funeral matters. This diverse practice allows officials and local governments to implement various schemes in order to choose the most appropriate one in a particular case.
Based on the above analysis of the issues of organizing a funeral business, the following conclusions can be formulated:
- an economic entity - a specialized service for funeral matters has the right to allocate land plots for burial, registration, burial, determine the operating hours of the cemetery entrusted to it, monitor compliance (monitor compliance) with established rules on the territory of the cemetery (of course, without the right to issue mandatory orders, impose measures of liability, etc., only with the right to transmit relevant information to the competent authorities). Within this framework, the specialized service has the right to prohibit vehicles from entering the cemetery territory if they violate the procedure for entering the cemetery territory established on the basis of the procedure for the activities of cemeteries (approved by local government bodies);
- an issue of local importance - the creation by local authorities of a specialized service for funeral matters - does not mean the establishment of one solely in the form municipal institutions and enterprises, this is also possible by assigning this status based on the results of a competition to legal entities of any organizational and legal form and form of ownership;
- land plots on the territory of burial places can be assigned to business entities - specialized services in matters of funeral business, the latter can also be assigned the functions of maintaining the corresponding burial places.
Undoubtedly, in the best possible way To eliminate existing conflicts and gaps in legislation in the field of burial and funeral business, it would be to introduce amendments to Federal Law No. 8-FZ. However, we should not expect any significant progress in resolving this issue in the near future. At the end of last year, Bill No. 304185-5 “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Burial and Funeral Business” was introduced into the State Duma, which provided for securing the right to bury the deceased and provide burial services to specialized funeral services, created by local government bodies, and for organizations, regardless of their organizational and legal forms, selected by local government bodies based on the results of an open competition. As part of the work on this project, at least some issues of determining the legal status of a specialized service and the procedure for organizing funeral business could be resolved at the local level.However, in February 2010, this project was withdrawn by the subject of the right of legislative initiative that introduced it and, as a result, work on the project was stopped.
Currently, only one bill on burial and funeral matters is being considered in the State Duma of the Russian Federation - N 252420-5 “On amendments to Article 17 of the Federal Law “On Licensing” individual species activities" and the Federal Law "On Burial and Funeral Business", which is aimed at introducing licensing of activities for the provision of certain types of funeral services.
| Review of judicial practice on the application of Art. 282.1 (“organization of an extremist community”) and Art. 282.2 (“organizing the activities of an extremist organization”) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation | ||
| Proceedings in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation to consider the case on the compliance of the Constitution of the Russian Federation with the initiative to hold a referendum of the Russian Federation on the stated issue(s) of the referendum | ||
Based on the characteristics of the ritual and funeral sphere and the need to resolve existing problems in the industry, it is necessary, first of all, to ensure coordination of the work of local governments, private, municipal and state enterprises. Such coordination is most appropriate through public-private partnerships as the most important tool for resolving industry problems and stimulating its development. The existing system of financing material and technical facilities for ritual and funeral purposes, based on the allocation of funds from local budgets, does not ensure their proper development, or even standard functioning. There is often not enough money for the improvement of new cemeteries and crematoria. Resolving this problem is also possible through public-private partnerships, which are increasingly being implemented in many sectors of the economy. In relation to the ritual and funeral sphere, public-private partnership can be implemented in the following areas:
Private financing: business participation in the construction of new
cemeteries, crematoria, pantheons, tombs, columbar walls, crypts; development of road transport and transport for transporting bodies of the deceased from the place of death to a medical institution; development of a production base for the production of ritual and funeral items (coffins, wreaths, photos, gravestones, etc.).
Municipal financing: construction of new municipal, state cemeteries and crematoria; maintenance and improvement of municipal, state cemeteries, military memorial complexes, sites; creation and maintenance of morgues of medical and preventive institutions; creation and maintenance of pantheons.
Formation in the regions of Trustee (expert) councils on funeral matters, which include representatives of municipal and/or state government bodies on a parity basis; municipal (state) and private enterprises of the ritual and funeral sphere; public and religious organizations. Such a Council takes part in the discussion of all documents on the development and functioning of the system of ritual and funeral services before their adoption by the relevant governing bodies. Thus, the joint participation of private and municipal structures in the development and adoption of all the main regulatory and directive documents regulating the activities of industry enterprises in the regions is ensured.
Formation of specialized services for funeral matters.
Constant interaction of specialized services on funeral matters with state (municipal) authorities, in particular with the departments (departments) of the Civil Registry Office. Interaction is also carried out with government healthcare institutions, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rospotrebnadzor, etc.
Contractual interaction between municipal enterprises in the ritual and funeral sphere (usually cemeteries) and business companies and partnerships that accept orders for ritual and funeral services. Orders are executed on the basis of cooperation between private and municipal enterprises in the industry, in accordance with the concluded agreement between them.
Certification of ritual and funeral services is provided for by the law of the Russian Federation of January 12, 1996 No. 8 Federal Law “On burial and funeral business”: Article 17. Sanitary and environmental requirements for maintenance. Clause 6. Items and substances used during burial (coffins, urns, wreaths, embalming agents) are allowed for use if there is a certificate confirming their sanitary, hygienic and environmental safety. However, in practice this rule hardly works. Through the interaction of public and private structures, certification should be fully operational and become a powerful lever for improving the quality of ritual and funeral services.
Creation of voluntary formations of enterprises and firms in the ritual and funeral sphere: Unions, Associations, Corporations, etc. They include both private and municipal organizations.
It is advisable to expand the existing powers of the subjects of funeral business management:
identify the responsible federal executive body and instruct it to develop a unified policy for the development of the funeral business;
to legislate the powers of the executive authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to organize funerals;
clearly state the powers of municipalities in the Law of the Russian Federation on burial;
legislate the powers and responsibilities in the area of creating non-state funeral facilities;
legislate the introduction of mandatory self-regulation in the funeral industry;
determine the procedure for the creation and maintenance of religious cemeteries;
legislate the right to own and use burial sites, establish the possibility of creating consumer unions.
Based on the realities of the market economy and the peculiarities of the sphere of ritual and funeral services, local governments, on a legislative basis, must solve a set of tasks to ensure the uninterrupted and effective functioning of the industry in the territory of the municipality:
1. Arranging the burial of the deceased. Any deceased person must be buried with dignity, regardless of the financial capabilities of him or his loved ones who took responsibility for the burial. It is imperative to ensure 100% completion of this task: it must be solved with the understanding that funeral services are the only type of household services that are provided in full regardless of the material wealth of the customer for each service object, i.e. in relation to each deceased. The burial of unidentified bodies is carried out at the expense of the state in specially designated areas of municipal cemeteries or in individual cemeteries.
The burial of deceased low-income citizens is carried out free of charge by any specialized funeral service. The burial of military personnel, military pensioners, and participants in the Great Patriotic War is carried out at the expense of the State in the prescribed manner.
2. Ensuring equal conditions for all participants in the funeral services market.
3. Ensuring regulation of the funeral services market in conditions where licensing of these services has been abolished. Accordingly, it should be implemented Governmental support specialized services for funeral matters. At the same time, it is necessary to limit the number of such services, keeping in mind the peculiarity of this market: the number of orders for disposal in a given region is a constant value.
Accordingly, the number of commercial organizations providing funeral services to the population should be constant and small in order to fully meet the needs of customers. World practice confirms this conclusion. Funeral business is the prerogative of municipal authorities, whose main task is to ensure a balance between meeting the needs for ritual and funeral services and the number of organizations providing such services.
4. Increasing the role of organizations that include cemeteries as the most important socially significant objects. Accordingly, such organizations need to be supported, including: financing the maintenance and improvement of cemeteries; ensure timely payment for burials, free of charge, of unidentified bodies and deceased low-income citizens; finance the purchase of equipment, reconstruction of crematoria, installation, commissioning of new furnaces; creation of new and expansion of existing cemeteries; organize personnel training, exchange of experience, elimination of consequences natural Disasters; provide moral support to funeral service workers.
5. The main task to be solved is to ensure social protection of low-income citizens when providing them with funeral services and at the same time increase the level of quality of the services provided (cemeteries and crematorium services). For these purposes, it is advisable in the regions to legislatively establish a procedure for providing a social package of funeral services at a fixed state (municipal) price, which has proven itself in other regions.
6. To overcome and eliminate the emerging shortage of land for burying the dead in coffins, primarily through the development of cremation of the dead. There should be a mechanism for using cemeteries where it works constantly. In particular, through the formation of family (ancestral) burials.
Thus, there is an urgent need to develop uniform norms and rules for the provision of funeral services not only at the federal, but also at the municipal level. The existing complex of legislative problems can be resolved by preparing a new edition of the Federal Law “On Funeral Business,” which will also require simultaneous amendments to the Land and Town Planning Codes of the Russian Federation and some other federal laws. The adoption of such rules will powerful tool streamlining this specific cluster of the economy. One more serious step To restore order in the funeral business can be the joint work of all funeral agencies on the basis of non-profit partnership.
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