Johannesburg - There was still no news on when the bodies of more than 80 South Africans killed in a building collapse in Nigeria will come home, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
“We still don't know. Even as we speak now the laboratory (in Lagos) has not given us an update,” Phumla Williams said.
“We reckon by end of the week there will be some information. You see they are not commissioned by us, they are commissioned by the Nigerian government. So they are reporting directly to the Nigerian government, not to us.”
Williams said once they get new information on those killed in the Synagogue Church of All Nations collapse, a media briefing would be called.
On October 12, the City Press newspaper quoted a Nigerian medical examiner as saying the bodies would be home by the end of the month.
“We are looking at three weeks,” Professor John Obafunwa, chief medical examiner of Lagos State, was quoted as saying.
“I would be surprised if we had to wait until November... I expect all bodies to be out by that time. The inquest could drag on for weeks and months. But we're not going to delay the release of bodies to family members because of that.”
Obafunwa was overseeing the identification process and was speaking from Lagos University Teaching Hospital, where some of the remains were being kept.
Obafunwa said the autopsies had been completed and samples were shipped out for DNA analysis.
He said the process of identification had been slow because Nigeria did not have facilities to analyse DNA.
On September 12, 116 people, among them 84 South Africans, were killed when a multi-storey guesthouse attached to the church collapsed in Lagos.
The church is run by Nigerian preacher TB Joshua. An inquest into the deaths began in mid-October in Nigeria.
A group of pastors called the Mahikeng Ministers Fellowship called on Nigerian authorities to expedite the repatriation of the bodies.
"We are concerned that until the (families) have mourned and buried their loved ones in dignity, families... will not find closure to carry on with their lives," the group's chairman Zandisile Mpame said in a statement.
He said it was unacceptable that the identification and repatriation of the bodies had still not been completed after 40 days.- Sapa