Undertakers in the Western Cape are battling financially amidst the load shedding crisis in the country.
Some face running into a deficit and are embalming bodies to preserve it for longer.
They have deemed their situation as a secondary pandemic which could leave them penniless and have a bad reputation.
Reverend Oscar Bougardt of Calvary Family Undertakers said they have now resorted to embalming bodies to preserve them and the storage facility where the bodies are kept uses a generator which costs close to R300 000.
“Load shedding has a very negative impact on the funeral industry. When a person passes away we have to remove the body, we need to put the body in a fridge to preserve it. If it is not stored in a fridge, the body will start to decompose.
“The generator for the place where we store our bodies costs R250 000 and that excludes the running of the generator. It costs the company extra R300 to R500 every time it’s load shedding to run the generator.
“We also embalm bodies to preserve it but this is also costly and it’s usually the family of the deceased who has to cough up extra. Bodies in the fridge must be kept at a minimum of 3 degrees from the time the body arrives until time of burial.
“I am a blessed small funeral undertaker to have my colleague of Royal Funerals to store bodies. Other funeral companies are really struggling.”
Ebrahim Solomons of the Western Cape Undertakers Forum said they also had to resort to the embalming process.
“Load shedding has not really affected us only when we need to transport bodies to another country or province and that is when we do the embalming.”
Thandile Mqoyi of Nozinga Funeral Services who has a storage facility at Airport Industria said the load shedding crisis was crippling undertakers who are not seeing their profits and are experiencing a new pandemic of its own.
“It is affecting us badly because load shedding schedules are unforeseen at times and even the schedules are not accurate because sometimes they will say it will be off for two hours and then it goes of for four hours and when it happens at night and our generator is a manual one and our automatic one was affected when the cables were tampered with now we need to use the manual one. Storing bodies is very sensitive.
“It is causing a bad reputation for us, the generator we priced now is more than R260 000 and then there are the electricity prices.
“It impacts the sustainability and profitability of the company. It is a very stressful side for us. We are operating on a deficit because of load shedding.”
The newly built Observatory Forensic Pathology Institute (OFPI) morgue could not have come at a better time as the crisis has hit its peak.
Provincial Department of Health spokesperson Byron la Hoe, said they were in the process of further administrative action of transferring staff from Salt River Mortuary which was built in 1957 to the new premises.
He said their fridges are not affected by load shedding but are continuing monitoring their systems they have in place.
“Most energy consuming equipment like fridges at our morgues are affected by load shedding, which require increased fuel consumption and vast expenditure to operate. Fortunately, several of our FPS facilities and laboratories in the province are equipped with generators or UPS systems and are able to provide a continuous service to our clients and members of the public.
“At FPS, we have been monitoring the fridges on an ongoing basis. Diesel is being procured as is required and all generators are functional.”
This week, the South African Funeral Practitioners Association (Safpa) said that loved ones had to be buried within four days or less to ease the pressure on funeral parlours and to minimise decay.