Grief in the Philippines comes with a bill attached. A standard wake and burial runs a family anywhere from ₱60,000 to ₱120,000 and that’s before anyone even gets to the cemetery plot.
Most households don’t have that kind of money sitting around on a good month, let alone at a difficult time of losing a loved one.
The government has a program meant to close that gap. Republic Act 12309, the Free Funeral Services Act, lapsed into law in September 2025 and makes a free funeral package available nationwide to families the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) determines are indigent or in crisis, delivered through funeral establishments accredited to take part in the program.
Before this law, DSWD’s existing burial aid only covered ₱5,000 to ₱50,000 under its regular crisis assistance program—a fraction of what a funeral actually costs.
Libreng Serbisyong Punerarya in Metro Manila, is one place families have turned to for help. They describe themselves on social media as an initiative to help less fortunate families.
What it offers is a full-glass OMS casket, seven days of embalming, funeral services, registration of the death certificate, and flowers with a stand.
In one case it’s posted about, the page says it helped a family in Caloocan process their funeral billing for submission to what it called the “Libreng Serbisyo Punerarya Program” of the Malacañang Action Center, and helped them secure an acknowledgment receipt.
Another family they helped described their relief after availing the service—that it came at a time when they had little else to hold onto, and made an already heavy goodbye a little easier to carry—fulfilling the initiative’s goal to give families in Metro Manila who can’t afford it a dignified send-off anyway.
This service only applies to families who haven’t already made arrangements with another funeral service. Once a family has signed on elsewhere, the page states that this option is off the table.
If you or someone you know is struggling to fund a funeral in Metro Manila right now, it’s worth a call before anything else: 0960 400 7441.
