An oversight visit to a state mortuary emphasised the urgent need for public awareness campaigns to encourage reporting missing loved ones to the police, aiming to reduce unclaimed bodies.

This came to light during an oversight visit by the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature Portfolio Committee on Health.

Committee chairperson Dr Imran Keeka said the oversight visits were prompted by the most complaints emanating from Park Rynie Mortuary and Phoenix Forensic Mortuary. 

“People have complained to us that the staff are rude, and they don’t get their loved ones on time. They also said that where people, for religious reasons, need the post-mortems to be expedited, those people are never assisted by the Park Rynie Mortuary,” Keeka said. 

He said they wanted to look at infrastructure, prolonged storage of bodies, and issue resolution in public interactions.

“At the Park Rynie Mortuary, we found a few infrastructure issues, minor infrastructure issues that needed attention,” Keeka said. 

“We were concerned that the scale used for weighing bodies when they arrive was not working, and we were more concerned about that, for example, as it may have an impact on the medical-legal processes.”

Keeka said a Lodox machine, which is an X-ray machine, was added at the Park Rynie Mortuary.

“The addition of the Lodox machine enables them to expedite post-mortems, especially for gunshot victims,” Keeka said. 

Keeka highlighted that it emerged that there needs to be public awareness to inform people that they must go and report their loved ones, who are missing for a long period of time, to the South African Police Service (SAPS). 

For instance, Keeka said unclaimed bodies in KZN mortuaries, some dating back to 2017, persist due to factors including families accustomed to long separations, and unidentified individuals from other provinces or countries. While post-mortems are complete, delays with police dockets, cases, and DNA samples from the SAPS contribute to the backlog.

The committee called on the public who have missing family members to urgently report them to their nearest police stations. 

State mortuaries were found to have a significant number of unidentified deceased bodies that remained unclaimed.

“At this stage, there are approximately 900 bodies still in our facilities, some going as far back as 2017,” Keeka said. 

“It is situations like this that we urge the public to come forward and say, ‘our loved one is missing and we want to find the person’. Through SAPS, those could be identified.” 

Keeka said this call to action is vital as the SAPS works closely with state mortuaries to keep unidentified deceased persons until they can trace their families.

“We repeat our call and encourage families to report their missing family members to the SAPS. This will significantly assist in reducing the growing backlog of unidentified bodies at state mortuaries and may work towards families finding closure,” Keeka said. 

He explained that the Department of Health is required to keep bodies for 21 days once processes have been completed. 

“It is the responsibility of municipalities to perform pauper burials and not the Department of Health. The Department of Health is currently only storing the bodies and is not responsible for burying bodies,” clarified Keeka. 

He said municipalities must be urged to allocate funding to pauper burials so that those can be concluded when the police and health department processes are complete.

“We can confirm that all Department of Health processes, in all of the cases of stored bodies in our mortuaries, have been concluded,” Keeka said. 

thobeka.ngema@inl.co.za

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