Funeral practitioners call for reduction in mourners to curb Covid-19
The South African Funeral Practitioners Association (SAFPA) has called on government to reduce the number of people allowed to attend funerals to 50.
Under level 1 of the lockdown, a maximum of 100 people are allowed to attend a funeral depending on the size of the venue.
The association’s spokesperson Vuyo Mabindisa says they fear the current numbers will lead to their workers contracting the virus.
“The associations strongly believe that level 5 and 4 regulations of 50 people attending the funeral will ease the stress on workers. Our workers are not immune to be infected and we don’t want to increase the risk by allowing more people attending the funeral.
“If you can go back to 50 people per funeral, then that ease the pressure from funeral parlours. We say only if our president can give us back the 50 people attending the funeral and the authorities like your police to go to cemeteries and make sure regulated number of people attend the funeral.”
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Mabindisa says the funeral sector is still struggling, despite the money made available through government's relief fund.
“Most of our funeral parlours, we had more PPE’s during the first wave and we had more storage, and some of us we doubled our mortuary storage facilities.
“For now, the complaints we get from members are the complaints that they cannot mitigate, and the economy went down, and obviously we cannot increase the cost. There was a relief fund given by the government, but we were not nearly enough. However, the leadership is engaging the government on province-to-province on how to mitigate that.”
