In an interview with FMT, Casket Paradise Funeral Care Director Peter Lee said the sector was seeing an increase in the number of players, apparently because there’s money to be made.
However, he added, those considering going into the business should be prepared for the challenges.
“One of the main challenges is the labour shortage,” he said. “Many locals don’t want to get involved in this business because of the taboos and the long hours. Those who do want to work in the industry, especially the younger people, want to be bosses with high salaries.”
He said this meant many funeral service providers had to rely on foreign labour. However, he added, foreign labour was also scarce at present.
The goods and services tax (GST) also posed a challenge, he said. Funeral service providers have to pay this but cannot pass on the cost to customers.
Furthermore, he said, operating costs had risen due to the minimum wage policy and higher fuel prices.
“On top of this, we have to be very competitive with our pricing due to the competition.”
Lee, who has been in the industry for more than 30 years, also spoke of the need for self-regulation of industry players.
Because there’s no association representing the industry, he said, there was no way to control the quality of services or to encourage companies to adopt better practices.
He said the absence of an association also made it difficult to tell how many companies were in the business and how much the industry was worth, although it was apparent that there were now more funeral service providers than before.
“Ideally, we should have a self-regulating organisation like the United Kingdom’s Funeral Planning Authority to regulate industry players so they can provide services of a certain standard.”
He said this would be the best way to ensure that clients were offered a variety of options for funeral plans, such as the prepaid funeral plans available in Britain, which allow payment in instalments.
A spokesman for a leading funeral parlour in Kota Kinabalu told FMT that labour was not a problem there as locals did not mind working as undertakers.
He said the main challenges were rising operational costs due to several factors, including the GST and fuel price hikes.
Goods and services that are not directly linked to a burial, cremation or funeral would generally be standard rated. These include food and drinks for a funeral service, rental of the funeral parlour and preparation of flowerbeds and other items required by customary or religious practices.
For Muslim funeral service provider My Khairat, rising operation costs are the only issue and even these are “still manageable”.
The company’s marketing manager, Farhana Mohd Noor, said My Khairat had no manpower issues as it used a network of local “burial managers” around the country.