Johannesburg – Local funeral services are forced to change their normal work schedules as the influx of corpses causes mortuary overflows.
Funeral parlour managers say the Covid-19 third wave has pressured them to conduct funerals every day and to spend more money on freelance workers to keep up with the number of corpses they receive each week.
This means that families also need to bury their loved ones sooner than normally expected and sometimes in the absence of their relatives who cannot make it in time.
Chomane Funeral Service director Mtodi Chomane said the best remedy to avoiding mortuary refrigerators overflow was to negotiate an earlier funeral date with families, a negotiation he describes hardest as most families would like to have their relatives and close friends attend the funeral.
“Though families usually disagree with us because they have to wait for family members from afar to attend the funeral, we try to explain and negotiate with them because we are also pressured,” said Chomane. He said they currently cover 15 funerals on average, with at least nine being Covid-19-related deaths.
“We handle all corpses as Covid- 19 for precaution because we do house pick-ups where no one verifies if the deceased is a Covid- 19 case or not, so we take serious precautions,” he said.
Though having more funerals may seem profitable, he explained that they spent as much as they received and job losses cornered some of their clients to cancel premiums, which meant they were also losing part of the business.
“When people are dying, then our expenditure goes up. Our operational expenses have increased – petrol, salaries on extra staff, more vehicles, spending on PPE [protective personal equipment] and more.
“People also lost their jobs due to Covid-19 and they suddenly can’t afford or default on their premiums, and because they have been our customers for years, we need to try and assist them.”
Ledwaba Funeral Parlour in Pretoria also confirmed that it recently needed to cover more funerals with fewer resources.
Though he could not reveal the number of deaths reported to them, Pontsho Phetla of Ledwaba Funeral Palour said an average of 60% were Covid-19-related deaths, but he believed there were more hidden cases as some never tested for the virus.
He said that the first and second waves forced them to always prepare for the worst and started bulk buying coffins, but they still struggle with PPE as they continue to increase prices with each outbreak due to the high demand.
“Covid-19 cases are rising rapidly and the government is not sponsoring us with any safety equipment.
“This is affecting the company financially. We are the frontline workers in this pandemic, but the appreciation shown does not match in any way,” said Phetla.
The South African Funeral Practitioners Association confirmed that its members were using each other’s services and resources to keep their businesses running afloat.
The organisation’s national public relations officer, Vuyo Mabindisa, said the first and second waves helped them better prepare for the coming outbreaks.
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