certificates
Justin Arenstein
THE Northern Province government is investigating allegations that mortuary staff have been taking bribes to change death certificates, and to channel business to specific funeral companies.
The provincial health department’s director general, Dr Nicholas Crisp, said this week the investigation is focused on the Pietersburg police forensic mortuary. His colleagues in the provincial safety and security department have been asked to help in the probe.
“I’ve had my suspicions for some time now that things just weren’t right at the Pieterburg police forensic mortuary,” he said. “There are lots of good reasons to hide things there and plenty of scope for financial gain.
“I’m sure there is a brisk business in people paying to have death certificates changed to obscure manslaughter, or even murder investigations.”
The allegations include mortuary staff supplementing their income by persuading grieving families to go to specific local undertakers, who then charge higher-than- normal rates for their services.
Staff have apparently been paid up to R10 000 to change death certificates in murder and manslaughter cases. Another allegation is that some hospital staff have been alerting funeral companies about serious or fatal accidents – before they alert the ambulance service.
The local Democratic Party, whose complaints to Crisp’s department sparked the probe, said it knows of undertakers who arrive at accident scenes before the victim is dead, to stake a claim on the corpse.
“We are also seriously concerned about reports that a [Pietersburg] district surgeon is prepared to sign death certificates for a fee, without ever having seen the deceased,” the DP said in its complaint.
Crisp said the investigation, now in its third month, is struggling to find conclusive evidence to back the allegations. He said the DP could have been more specific in its complaint.
But he dismissed the possibility that staff at the province’s main hospital in Pietersburg are involved. The mortuary there is too small, he said, and most of the deceased “processed” there had died of natual causes.
The investigation follows a similar probe two years ago in Mpumalanga, which uncovered a range of “incentive schemes” operated by local undertakers for mortuary staff at the province’s Themba Hospital.