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At present the police, who are, as a body, unable to read or write, issue tickets
to funeral parties, and then give the information regarding the address to the record-
ing officers who simply write it down and pass it on to the District Officers. The
Police Agency will be replaced by a corps of ramosis, who can read and write. These
men will be directly under the District Officer. They will be on day and night duty.
They will have allotted beats. To each beat 2 men will be posted, who will relieve
one another every 8 hours. For the sake of uniformity the hours of relief should
be 6 a.m., 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. To each beat there will be one book of death certifi-
cate memos. in foil and counterfoil, and this will be passed on from the relieved to
the relieving ramosi.
The primary duty of the ramosi will be to patrol his beats and to see that no
funeral party starts from it, without a death certificate memo., which he will himself
write out and hand to a member of the party after verification of the address.
It will be as well to hold the two men on duty on each beat jointly responsible
for any failure unless the blame can be clearly fixed.
The book of certificates must always be in the hands of the ramosi on duty, and
the ramosi on duty must never leave his beat, except to verify an address or to
communicate with the District Staff.
This is most important, because after the system is properly understood by the
people they will habitually look to the ramosi for the certificate, and if he is not to
be found great public inconvenience will be felt and the scheme must fail.
It will, however, be necessary for the sectional Medical Officer to arrange to
meet all the registration ramosis under his orders once in the morning and once in
the afternoon before he starts on his rounds ; and for this purpose a time should be
fixed and a meeting-place arranged.
This place should be selected so as to constitute, so fur as possible, a converging
centre for the beats of the various ramosis, and where possible it should be a Plague
or Municipal Office or Shelter.
This place might be fixed as the relieving place : and a book might be kept
there in which the ramosi should enter the time of his coming on and off duty.
It is hardly necessary to emphasize the following points, they are of vital
importance :—
1. A funeral must never be forcibly stopped.
2. Any oppression on the part of the ramosis must be vigilantly guarded
against and promptly and severely dealt with.
3. The certificates are only certificates of the address of the deceased, they
have nothing to do with the cause of death, which it will remain the
duty of the Medical Officer to ascertain by personal enquiry at the
house.
The secondary duty of the ramosis will be to keep themselves and the Medical
Officers informed of all sickness in their beats, and it is possible that to men who
perform this duty well a small reward may occasionally be offered.
Their beats should at once be fixed and they should be carefully drilled in their
duties. They should be placed upon their boats, made to learn the locality thorough-
ly, and instructed to ascertain and report to the Sectional Medical Officer (who
should at once, under the orders of the District Officer, select a meeting-place) all
sickness and death.
The men sent must be arranged so as to cover the whole district day and night.
As soon as the men are, in the opinion of the District Officer, sufficiently instructed,
he will issue to them certificate books. These books should be obtained at once