Morgue’s decaying neglect

Overgrown grass, unkempt storage rooms, blood splatters on walls and corpses on the floor were some of the horrendous scenes that greeted the Daily Dispatch at the state mortuary in Woodbrook.

Five years after this newspaper first exposed the poor state of the mortuary, nothing has changed.

Provincial spokesman Siyanda Manana said the facility had been left unguarded because they needed to allow Buffalo City Metro workers to repair the mortuary’s broken pipes.

“The infrastructure is being attended to. Workers of the municipality were going and out of the premises. Obviously there would be a mess when people are working on plumbing.”

Thembalethu Mpahlaza, the regional co-ordinator for state mortuaries, confirmed that an admin clerk was running the facility but promised that this would change next week.

“ is going back to his position as an admin clerk,” Mpahlaza said.

Mpahlaza said they were not aware of any human organs lying around in the morgue. He said he only knew of “neatly packed” blood samples that were kept for various reasons.

Manana said there had been improvements since the Dispatch investigation.

“Equipment has been bought, more vehicles have been bought and the res-ponse time has been improved,” he added. — siyab@dispatch.co.za / zwangam@dispatch.co.za