Postmortem to delay return of dead agriculture official

KAMPALA.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said it will not return the body of the late Micheal Odong, a commissioner in the Agriculture ministry, before his postmortem report is released from Amsterdam.

Speaking in a telephone interview yesterday, Ambassador James Mugume, the ministry permanent secretary, said in developed countries, transporting a body by air requires the highest level of clearance including a postmortem report to guide how it will be transported.

He explained that bodies are considered to be harmful and cannot be brought near living persons.

“We expected the report out like yesterday but maybe it will come out today. We cannot make any arrangements without the postmortem report because it details so many things which also guide how the body must be transported,” he said.

Arrangements
According to Mr Okasai Opolot, the director of crop resources in the ministry of Agriculture, they are waiting for communication from Brussels Embassy which has been tasked to follow up on the repatriation arrangements.

KLM airlines transported the late commissioner from Entebbe Airport to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam before his death on Sunday but Mr Okasai said the contract they had with him was to transport a living human being, which contract was breached when he died before arriving to his final destination.

Asked to confirm if that was the state of affairs, a woman at the KLM Kampala office, who only identified herself as Lydia, confirmed the airlines’ stand saying it was the routine and the two scenarios are different.

“We transported him from Entebbe to Amsterdam and even from Amsterdam we had booked him into the 9am flight to Brussels and his seat was reserved but when his name was called out, he never turned up,” she said.

She added that the full information regarding the late Odong’s mysterious death on Sunday is with their Amsterdam office where the communications office is based.

According to Mr Okasai, after the airline demanding for more money to return the remains of the fallen commissioner for agro-chemicals, they decided to engage the embassy in Brussels to make the logistical arrangements to repatriate the body home which is cheaper than contracting the airline.