Funeral undertakers want to shutdown Home Affairs with a protest in Pretoria

They are demanding that the department allows them to issue death certificates on behalf of bereaved families.

UTT comprises mainly of black-owned funeral practitioners’ associations across the country. 

Spokesperson Muzi Mhlengwa says the issuing of death certificates is one of the UTT's many demands that the department is believed to have backtracked on since their last two meetings.

"We agreed that undertakers should be allowed to register death certificates on behalf of the families because families are at the time in pain and grieving and cannot be seen going up and down and seen to be registering deaths.

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"We agreed that the funeral undertakers will now be allowed to apply for their designation without having to produce their Certificate of Compliance (COC), simply because some of them do not have COCs because most of them do not have their own mortuary facilities.

"Also we agreed on the issue of a proxy most of us are unable to be at our day to day business, therefore we will be able to use a proxy to appoint somewhere when we are not available and act on our behalf.

"We also agreed that Home Affairs can operate on a uniform so that what is happening in Home Affairs in Pretoria is the same as what's happening in Durban," says Mhlengwa.

UTT members plan on protesting in front of Home Affairs from 8 o’clock this morning.