The founder
Dato' Devman Segar Muthusamy founded MIFA and remains its president.
Registration PPM-003-14-06102019
About the Malaysian Indian Funeral Association
A registered non-profit community association, formed to make sure that no Malaysian Indian family faces a death without help, and no one is buried without dignity.
The Malaysian Indian Funeral Association is registered as Persatuan Pengebumian India Malaysia.
We help Malaysian Indian and Hindu families through bereavement: funerals, religious rites, burial and cremation, international repatriation, and the ancestral pilgrimages to Gaya and Kashi.
What we are, and what we are not
We are a community association. We are not a funeral company with a charitable arm, and we are not a charity that subcontracts everything to a funeral company.
The practical difference shows up in the ordinary cases rather than the exceptional ones. A family that cannot afford what they have asked for is told so plainly, and offered what they can afford, rather than being sold it anyway. A family that does not need something is told they do not need it. A family with no money at all is helped regardless.
Our objective
To make sure that a death in a Malaysian Indian family is met with competent, unhurried help, in the family’s own language, at whatever hour it happens — and that no one in this community is buried or cremated without the rites their tradition asks for, whether or not there is anyone left to pay for it or to attend.
Our values
Dignity is not a service tier. The rites performed for a family who cannot pay are the rites, not a shortened version of them.
Say what is true. Including when the true answer is that we cannot do something, that it will take longer than the family hoped, or that the thing they are asking for is not necessary.
The family’s tradition, not ours. Practice varies enormously between communities, and a family’s way of doing this is not a deviation from a standard we hold.
Stay afterwards. The relationship does not end at the crematorium gate. The sixteenth day, the annual remembrance, and the journeys that come years later are part of the same obligation.
More about the association
Community and welfare
What MIFA does beyond bereavement: welfare assistance, education, training and employment.
Talk to us
Membership, donations, partnership, volunteering, or a question you are not sure who to ask.
How we are funded
Member subscriptions
Members pay an annual subscription. This is the association's most predictable income and the reason it can commit to cases before knowing whether they will be paid for.
Fees for services
Families who can pay, pay. What we charge covers what things cost — the crematorium, the priest, the transport, the casket — and the association's running costs. There is no margin being extracted here.
Donations
Donations fund the work nobody is billed for: families in hardship, and the unclaimed deceased. Get in touch if you would like to give, and we will tell you exactly what it pays for.
What we do not do
We do not take commissions from suppliers for directing families to them, and we do not sell packages designed to be upgraded. If a supplier is recommended here it is because they are good.
Who is behind it
Real names, real roles. A bereaved family deciding who to trust with their father's body is entitled to know who they are dealing with.