Funeral undertakers threaten to strike
‘We demand cluster storages’
More than 3,000 funeral parlours in SA have threatened to embark on a national strike and to also withdraw corpse removal services from Monday if the government does not respond to their demands.
The funeral parlour directors, who say that the government has been ignoring them since October last year, demand the outsourcing of mortuary facilities to be recognised and legalised, and the amendment of bylaws by municipalities to enable cluster storages.
They say this will ease their financial burden because they are now required to pay for storage at private facilities.
They also demand that the department of home affairs derive annual provincial schedules for the writing of designation number examinations, and for the department of small businesses to channel some of its budget to the funeral industry.
Department of health spokesperson Popo Maja could not immediately respond after Sowetan sent him a list of demands from the funeral parlours. Maja said he was still dealing with other media inquiries and promised to respond but had not done so at the time of publication.
Home affairs spokesperson Siya Qoza had also not responded at the time of going to print.
In a statement released by a task team formed by funeral associations, forums, undertakers and other formations, the industry vowed to bring the country to a standstill.
“We will leave corpses everywhere; we will not collect them from homes, hospitals, accident scenes and mortuaries. More than 3,000 parlours will embark on the strike,” said task team spokesperson Thokozani Dladla.
He said they will hold demonstrations outside mortuaries and hospitals across the country, adding that the shutdown would mean that there will be no burials and erections of tombstones.
Dladla said they have given ministers in all departments regulating them until Sunday midnight to respond to the demands they submitted to the presidency in October.
“We submitted a list of our demands last October at the Union Buildings but no-one has given us a feedback. They are ignoring our calls and letters and we now want them to listen to us,” Dladla said.
“We decided to approached the presidency to directly convey the message to relevant ministers who have been ignoring us for such a long time.”