Cape Town – The South African Funeral Practitioners Association (Safpa) has reportedly pleaded with South Africans to bury their loved one within four days of their death, as funeral parlours have come under pressure due to load shedding and heat waves.
Safpa said that load shedding combined with a heatwave across the country had resulted in the fast decomposition of bodies at funeral parlours, reports said.
The association said due to ongoing power cuts, it too funeral undertakers longer to transport corpses as traffic lights tended to be off, reported EWN.
It said also said that funeral practitioners battled to keep their businesses running as their backup systems remained under pressure, the report said.
Safpa’s chairperson Monageng Legae said they were pleading with the public to preserve the dignity of the deceased.
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“The bodies that we currently do have, have pre-existing conditions. When those kinds of bodies meet the heat, the body starts heating up because it has high blood pressure or diabetes,” the report quoted Legae as saying.
Meanwhile, Safpa’s national secretary-general, Vuyisile Mabindisa claimed that the present heatwave was creating a sharp increase in the pace of decomposition, reported Kaya595.
“We acknowledge that death comes at a time we don’t really have money and many families want to make sure everything is done accordingly, as funeral practitioners we are regulated and told to have a backup generator.
“However, with these long hours of load-shedding, it would be unjust for us to express that the strain of load-shedding is becoming severe,” Madindisa was quoted saying in the report.
He urged people to bury their loved ones within four days of their death so as to ease pressure on funeral parlours and to ensure that their loved ones were buried with minimal decay, the report said.
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Compiled by Olwethu Mpeshe
