Johannesburg - Gauteng mortuaries had 1 173 unidentified bodies last year. A further 120 bodies that had been identified were buried as paupers and no one claimed them.
This was revealed by the Health MEC Nomathemba Mokgethi in a written reply to the DA’s Jack Bloom’s questions in the Gauteng Legislature.
Mokgethi said the Germiston mortuary had 400 unidentified bodies followed by the Johannesburg mortuary with 169 bodies. There were 103 bodies at the Diepkloof mortuary, 131 at the Sebokeng mortuary and 117 at the Pretoria mortuary.
He said that every year the number of bodies handled by the Gauteng Forensic Pathology Services increased.
Bloom said there were 18 324 bodies stored in the 11 state mortuaries in Gauteng last year compared to 17 940 in 2019. State mortuaries are for unnatural deaths that need a post-mortem for investigation purposes, he said.
“In 2019, there were only 18 identified bodies that were unclaimed. This jumped to 120 bodies in 2020 that had to be buried in pauper graves. This is probably because of the economic hardship of the pandemic lockdowns, so families were unable to afford to bury their loved ones, which is very sad.
Bloom said he was disappointed that the internet identification site, which was first promised in 2006, was not running.
“Mokgethi says that the Department of eGovernance has started to hand over an internet identification system, and it is being evaluated and tested. I hope that it is implemented soon as it would assist relatives in identifying bodies by using the internet rather than traumatic and time-consuming visits to mortuaries,” Bloom said.
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