Funeral company refuses to share the cemetery entry fee with "Kremenchutsky Telegraf"

"Kremenchutsky Telegraf" (Poltava oblast) says that the local communal company "Special Funeral Combine" did not answer their information request, claiming that the requested information was not public. The media outlet reported this on February 5.

In the request, the editors asked to explain why the company's employees did not allow them to enter the cemetery and, as the media outlet writes, demanded money for entrance.

The request by Kremenchutsky Telegraf, photo by telegraf.in.ua

The company's reply sent on February 2 says that the requested information was not public as defined by the Law of Ukraine "On Access to Public Information".

They explained that the information about "whether vehicles carrying bodies can drive to the pre-purchased burial plot if the vehicle is not a SFC hearse" is not one that needs public disclosure.

Instead, the editors provided information on the cost of the Combine's hearse services.

Photo by telegraf.in.ua

Roman Holovenko, a lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information, explains that the request is problematic, as the funeral company is not an authority. According to him, the Law "On Access to Public Information" stipulates that the company is not obligated to provide all open information it possesses upon request. The law only obliges communal companies to provide information about the manager's salary (Clause 5, Part 1, Article 13).

"However, this should not prevent you from contacting the company for a comment on a conflict situation (in case they refuse to comment, it should be noted in the news article; the reply 'file a request' is in fact also a refusal to comment). However, the request should be addressed to the executive committee to which the company is subordinate, as it also may have relevant information and the executive committee is a full-fledged information manager," says the lawyer.

Also, Roman Holovenko does not recommend opening a request with the words "provide an explanation." In this way the information managers consider everything in this query point as information that needs to be created. The data you can request is the data that already exists, the lawyer advises.