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Mortuary attendants dump bodies at Luweero council offices
A mortuary attendant prepares to transport one of the corpses that had earlier been dumped at the Luweero Town Council offices. PHOTO | DAN WANDERA
What you need to know:
- Ms Rashida Namatovu, a resident of Kiwogozi zone in Luweero Town Council who on Wednesday blamed officials for failing to clear allowances of the mortuary attendants revealed that while the protest was genuine, the action caused discomfort to many people
Staff members at Luweero town council were Wednesday morning welcomed by a heavy stench after mortuary attendants dumped two decomposing corpses at their offices in protest against nonpayment of their wages and disrespect.
The foul smell from the decomposing human corpses caused more scare as residents kept a distance from the Town Council Offices until the protesting mortuary attendants retrieved the bodies after a brief meeting with officials from the town council.
Ms Rashida Namatovu, a resident of Kiwogozi zone in Luweero Town Council who on Wednesday blamed officials for failing to clear allowances of the mortuary attendants revealed that while the protest was genuine, the action caused discomfort to many people.
“While I support the mortuary attendant’s move to demand for their allowances, the protest appeared ugly because the decomposing corpses were dumped at a public place. This caused more scare to our children,” she said.
But the mortuary attendants supported their action claiming that they are not given the body bags among other materials required to safely move the unclaimed bodies to the public cemetery for burial.
“We have no means of transport among other challenges. We used a motorcycle to transport the bodies to the Town Council cemetery for burial. We are not facilitated to do the work yet the bodies remain unclaimed at the mortuary for more than 4 days,” one of the attendants said.
The mortuary attendants accuse the Luweero Town Council authorities of failing to pay their respective allowances between the months of April and November 2023 totalling Shs990,000 per person.
But Luweero Town Council Vice Chairperson Mr Nathan Lumu in a brief interview with journalists claimed that the delay in having the allowances cleared is as a result of the late release of the funds by the government, and the small revenue resource envelope at the town council.
“We have talked to the mortuary attendants and will soon clear their unpaid allowances. We are struggling in managing some of the services including the burial of the unclaimed bodies at Luweero Hospital,” he said.
Hospital cries out
Early this year (2023), the management at Luweero Hospital appealed to the district authorities over the increasing costs incurred by the hospital in managing the unclaimed human bodies at the mortuary.
The bodies are in many cases dropped at the Hospital mortuary by the police and remain unclaimed for more than 3-days.
The unclaimed bodies according to the Senior Hospital Administrator Mr Robert Lukenge call for an additional budget because the hospital in many instances foots the bill of ensuring that the bodies are transported and buried at the cemetery.
“While we don’t condemn the police for transporting the bodies to the hospital for the postmortem, the burden of managing them falls back to the hospital in cases where the body is supposed to be removed from the mortuary after 3-days,” said the hospital management in a letter to the district authorities in April 2023.
