Govt starts emptying police mortuary

Govt starts emptying police mortuary JANA-MARI SMITH

The ministries of health and safety, together with the City of Windhoek, have begun cremating some of the hundreds of unclaimed bodies that have been stuck in a no-man’s land for years while authorities scrambled to address the problem, particularly at the police morgue in Windhoek.

This week, the health ministry confirmed that since April, when the ministry met with morgue and City officials, they agreed on the way forward and on how and when to dispose of the bodies.

“The process of laying to rest the unclaimed bodies already started and this is in line with the governing Namibian laws and regulations,” the health ministry’s permanent secretary, Andreas Mwoombola said.

He said the City of Windhoek, the safety and health ministries had agreed on the way forward, although he did not go into detail.

“Due to the sensitivity surrounding the issue and the fact that dignity and respect for the deceased need to be maintained, we are unable to divulge any further information,” Mwoombola said.

City spokesperson Lydia Amutenya confirmed that “the process has started and is ongoing.” She said the Windhoek crematorium was currently closed for repairs and maintenance but would reopen at the beginning of August.

In April, the health ministry told Namibian Sun that 390 unclaimed bodies at the state and police mortuaries needed to be cremated.

At the time, the expected costs would have been N$164 700, the ministry said.

Mwoombola did not provide details to Namibian Sun this week on how many of those bodies have been cremated to date, although reliable sources said that no more than 20 were cremated from the stockpile of unclaimed bodies at the police morgue.

In July 2016, Namibian Sun reported that due to no money budgeted for unclaimed body disposals in the police budget, morgue officials had pleaded with their bosses and colleagues at the health ministry for assistance.

At least 10 post-mortems could not be performed at the time, because the overcrowded cold room - designed to hold 24 corpses as well as a few smaller, bagged bundles of human remains – made it difficult to carry out scheduled tasks.

At the time, as many as 180 bodies were reportedly stored at the morgue, with no relatives or family having shown up to claim their missing family members.

Among the remains were the bodies of babies that had been dumped. Some of the bodies had been in the mortuary since 2009.

In March, officials confirmed that approximately 120 unclaimed bodies remained at the police morgue.

Since then, the issue of responsibility for the unclaimed bodies has been at the centre of several months’ delay on how to deal with the problem.

Agreements on the table

In March, the health and safety ministries had not yet reached agreement on who was responsible for unclaimed bodies.

The health ministry told Namibian Sun at the time that although they would assist the police when possible it was not their responsibility.

On the other hand, the head of the National Forensic Science Institute, Dr Paul Ludik, said in terms of the Public Health Act, the responsibility for unclaimed bodies, and their disposal, lay with the local authority or the health ministry.

Nevertheless, sources confirmed that meetings held over the past months, and this month, concluded with agreements on the matter, although details have not been made public to date.

Last week, the police’s Inspector-General Sebastian Ndeitunga said he could not comment on whether a final solution to the problem has been found, but said the three parties have reached an agreement to map the way forward to ensure a permanent solution.

Reliable sources told Namibian Sun recently that even if the dozens of bodies at the morgue were cremated over the next few months, a permanent solution was critical.

“Every month, bodies come in and some are not claimed. The situation will not improve unless we can regularly dispose of unclaimed bodies.”