MUSLIM families faced with a chronic shortage of cemetery plots in Sydney are finding it cheaper to take the bodies of loved ones back to the Middle East for burial.

As many as 30 bodies are being flown to the Middle East each month after the city’s major cemetery, Rookwood, gave away its last Muslim plot in February, leaving the Islamic community in crisis over where to bury its dead.

Muslims were the first to run out of burial space at the cemetery in Sydney’s western suburbs. But the same problem is facing theJewish community and smaller Christian denominations, which have joined with the Muslim community to lobby the state Government and Department of Lands, without success.

Despite the shortage of plots, significant tracts of Rookwood remain vacant. Uneven distribution of land in the past has left Catholics and Anglicans with enough burial spaces for decades to come.

The secretary of the Muslim Cemetery Trust at Rookwood, Wasim Raza, said the issue was causing a great deal of distress to Muslim families.

He said that apart from flying bodies to the Middle East, the only other alternative was for people to bury their loved ones at Riverstone cemetery on the northwestern outskirts of the city.

Mr Raza said it was a religious obligation for Muslims to visit the graves of their loved ones and to maintain them in good condition. He said this would not be possible at an isolated and decrepit cemetery far from the community.

“It is scary for old ladies and young kids to go out there, it is not a nice atmosphere,” Mr Raza said. “For a lot of families, the husband is buried at Rookwood, the wife is buried 40km away. The families are being split in death. It is very distressing.”

Lakemba Travel manager Omar Yasine said his company first began getting inquiries a year ago, and he was now flying five bodies a month back to Lebanon.

He said it cost about $12,000 to bury a Muslim in Sydney whereas he could fly the body home to Lebanon and guarantee an appropriate burial for under $8000.

“I am only dealing with the Lebanese community,” he said. “I estimate there are between 20 and 30 bodies a month being flown out of Australia, including the Egyptians, the Turks, and all the other Muslim communities.

“Rather than burying their loved ones in an isolated place like Riverstone, Muslim families prefer to send their loved ones back to their home countries.”

Lebanese Muslim Association president Tom Zreika said finding somewhere to bury their dead was a big problem for the community. He said they were co-operating closely with the Jewish community and those from the smaller Christian denominations to solve theproblem.

“It is funny, but we have become mates with the Jewish in our most dire moment because they are in exactly the same boat,” he said.

Vic Alhadeff of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies said the Jews, Christians and Muslims had worked together to locate suitable land near Bowral, south of Sydney. However, the NSW Government had rejected their proposal without coming up with an alternate site.

A spokesman for NSW Lands Minister Tony Kelly said the Government was investigating future cemetery sites within the Sydney basin as a long-term solution. He said there was still space in the general cemetery if Muslims did not mind being buried with people of other faiths. He said Muslims also had the option of purchasing land in private cemeteries.