The Witness reported on Friday that the situation at government mortuaries in Pietermaritzburg and Durban was getting worse as a result of a go-slow on the part of workers.  

The provincial health department was apparently engaged in talks with striking mortuary workers to resolve the situation.  A senior official in the department’s pathology services unit said:  “In some mortuaries families have been waiting for more than two weeks for the release of the bodies of their loved ones.  A solution has to be found as soon as possible as the current situation can’t be allowed to continue.”  He claimed that there was a backlog of 28 bodies at the Fort Napier Medico-Legal Mortuary.  Pietermaritzburg’s Fort Napier Medico-Legal Mortuary and Durban’s Gale Street mortuary were also affected.  The workers have been embroiled in a protracted dispute with the department over salaries and working conditions in general.  Democratic Alliance provincial spokesperson on health, Imran Keeka, said the impact of the mortuary strike was now being felt in hospitals and clinics across the province.  “What the employees are striking over are old issues which the MEC should have resolved several years ago,” he observed.

• Read the full report by Clive Ndou at News24

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