The council maintains the mosque, pays its water and electricity, and works with the committee on everything else. The Ramadan timetable is the committee's and goes on the board a week before the month.
When somebody dies here, the council's part is practical and is done without paperwork or charge: the burial ground, the digging, the water, the tractor, the hall if the family wants it, and word sent to relatives on other islands, which the office does from its own telephone.
Somebody from the council is reachable at any hour for this. The number is on the board outside the office and on the mosque noticeboard, and on an island of seven hundred and eighty people it is answered.
The burial ground was extended in 2022 and the record of plots is kept at the office, which matters more than it sounds: families returning after twenty years to find a grave have been able to, because somebody wrote it down.
A death in Male or elsewhere, where the family wants the burial here, should be telephoned to the office as early as possible so the boat and the ground are ready. The council has never refused and would not.