‘No strike’, but bodies pile up in mortuaries

Despite the South African Liberated Public Sector Workers Union (Salipswu) denying that they have gone on strike, and the Gauteng Department of Health saying they’ve nearly reached the end of the negotiation process with the union, funeral parlours say they are feeling the effects of a backlog in post-mortems.

The go-slow at Gauteng mortuaries, which started on March 7 due to alleged unfulfilled promises from the department of health, has seen forensic pathology workers embarking on an unprotected strike, and abandoning their responsibilities of dissecting and eviscerating bodies.

A funeral undertaker, who asked to remain anonymous, said “depending on the extent of the strike, accidental deaths may not be removed from the place of death. This includes motor vehicle crashes or any other unnatural deaths.

“Grieving families will ultimately suffer the most as they will have to wait until the strike is over to continue with funeral arrangements”.

Maziya funeral services in Soweto said: “We are all affected by the strike because we are unable to fetch bodies from government mortuaries, but our company is not hard hit by it because that is not the only place we collect bodies for our clients.”

Victor Chukudu, the Gauteng provincial organiser of Salipswu, says the government had promised them that they would implement a training programme which will allow all workers dealing with forensic pathology to earn a formal SAQA accredited qualification, which will qualify them for the “special damage allowance”.

“It is not a strike,” he says. “Workers are still going to work, and the only people involved are the forensic pathology workers.

“The matter is in the labour courts and court proceedings will resume on Thursday.

“As a union, we would like to apologise to the public for any inconveniences, but we are only trying to fight for our rights,” Chukudu told The Citizen.

Gauteng’s acting chief executive of forensic medical services, Dr Medupe Modisane, says the negotiations are nearly done and regulations for the training programme will be finalised soon.

“It is a long process, but we are close to the end. The regulations have already been given to the minister of health to look at and so the regulations will be in effect very soon,” he said.

In the meantime, Jack Bloom, DA Gauteng shadow health MEC, says this has resulted in mortuaries like the Germiston mortuary piling up with 65 bodies and has left families who wish to bury their loved ones waiting in distress.

Modisane says that while the Germiston mortuary is affected, there are still a few forensic pathology workers carrying out their responsibilities at “smaller” mortuaries.

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