The Calcutta Municipal Corporation’s outgoing councillors have been told by outgoing mayor Firhad Hakim to keep track of deaths in their area and to alert him or his deputy if anyone found it difficult to get a death certificate.

The civic body will make necessary arrangements to deliver the certificate.

In a videoconference with all outgoing councillors, also called ward coordinators, outgoing mayor Firhad Hakim told them that families should not face the trauma of visiting multiple doctors to get a death certificate.

Hakim, now the chairperson of the CMC’s board of administrators, said the civic body would make arrangements to take bodies to a government hospital for necessary action.“Ward and borough coordinators have been told to remain alert about any death in their wards. There have been many instances of families finding it difficult to get death certificates. Bodies remain in houses for hours,” Hakim.

“This should not happen. The coordinators should inform me or Atin Ghosh about such instances. We will then get the bodies transported to medical colleges for necessary process to be followed… but the bodies should not remain in the house for hours,” Hakim said.

Atin Ghosh is the outgoing deputy mayor and a member of the CMC’s board of administrators. He is in charge of the civic body’s health department.

There have been several instances of people saying it was “a harrowing struggle” to get a death certificate. The dead were either Covid-19 patients staying at home or suffering with symptoms of Covid-19.

A family in Beniapukur was prevented by their neighbours from taking out the body of an elderly woman. They said the woman had died of Covid-19. The body could be taken out on Thursday, close to 20 hours after the woman’s death.

A Behala family with four Covid-19 patients struggled for hours on Sunday night and Monday morning to arrange for the cremation of the eldest member, who died within hours of receiving the Covid test report on Sunday night.

Several doctors had refused to issue the death certificate, the family has said.

Earlier this month, a family had to hire a freezer used to store ice creams to preserve the body of an elderly man at their Amherst Street flat for two days till his Covid test report arrived.

A neighbour said after he passed away, the doctor who had suggested a Covid test did not issue a death certificate. He suspected the man of suffering from the disease.

Hakim asked the outgoing councillors to seek police help in such cases. City police commissioner Anuj Sharma was present during the videoconference on Thursday.

He asked them to ensure people got ambulances to shift a Covid patient to hospital.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had said on Tuesday that people dying with symptoms of Covid whose test results are pending can be cremated without waiting for the results. The bodies will be cremated according to guidelines for cremating Covid bodies.