Pretoria - The impact of load shedding on funeral parlours has left undertakers fighting to maintain their reputation with no support from the government.
Thus, the SA Funeral Practitioners Association is urging people to consider burying their loved ones within four days to ease pressure on the industry.
Association members said they made compromises just to please their clients to ensure that they bury their loved ones with dignity even if it meant diminishing profit margins.
This meant shouldering the impact of load shedding and spending a lot of money on fuel to have back-up generators running to ensure corpses did not decompose.
Moreover, they said some corpses are fetched from government mortuaries in a decomposing state because the state’s resources are limited due to load shedding. They have to spend money on costly chemicals to ensure that families receive the bodies in a good state.
Tshepo Tshabalala of Kgatso Funerals in East Lynne said: “Load shedding is hurting and killing our businesses. The cost of diesel to operate back-up generators is so high that it affects profit margins negatively.
“To our industry load shedding has become another pandemic. Covid-19 hurt us badly. I think maybe the suggestion for the public to consider burying their loved ones sooner would be beneficial to everybody.”
Lunga Makaya and Provia Makola of Assurex Farewell Services in Mamelodi said they could only imagine the strain undertakers were having to endure right now. Their business collapsed during the pandemic and they have not managed to bounce back.
Janbob Mathembe of Rhulani Math Funeral Home in Mabopane said: “The government should consider small businesses like us and provide us with back-up generators or solar panels that could power our refrigerators overnight.”
“I cannot say people should or should not bury their loved ones in four days. I understand people have different beliefs. But it would provide some relief because if you bury just more than two people each day, it will be better than burying 20 people at once on a weekend. This business has become very expensive because of load shedding. I spend at least R800 a day on diesel to power the back-up generator. These generators don’t last because they need a lot of air as they overheat. But you have to cover them because if you do not cover them criminals steal them. Things have been tough.”
Selepe Letsoalo of SE40 Funeral Services in Mabopane said load shedding was bad, but burying people within four days could make things even harder. He cautioned everyone to “think about this a bit”.
His argument is that this business thave five stages, most of them affected by load-shedding. First, it is picking up the body. Arriving at an under-resourced government mortuary, the undertaker would found the body already decaying. That will cost money in the form of chemicals to fix it.
“The next step is the registration of death. Systems are often down because of load shedding, meaning more delays than before. Then comes the booking of the grave at the municipality. This process is also affected by load shedding. The system is down. You struggle to make a payment.”
Letsoalo said another step affected by load shedding was registering and processing insurance claims.
The other stage is the storage of the deceased – a delicate and costly process. He said a corpse should not be frozen and unfrozen as that caused decay; hence chicken companies would throw away chicken simply because they were frozen and unfrozen.
“There are still claims and registrations in-between. If you just say bury people in four days, who is going to pay for the funeral because families rely on their insurers for payouts?”
Director of Environmental Health at the Department of Health, Murdock Ramathuba, said at the moment in the public service, they did not have a situation where mortuaries were “entirely non-functional because of load shedding”. They have procured back-up generators, which he admitted cost a lot of money to operate.
He said the department could not say whether or not people should bury their loved ones within four days, as government mortuaries only hold the bodies for a day or two before they are moved to private undertakers. The exception was with uncollected bodies.
Pretoria News