War vets want mortuary

A visit to Nyamandlovu at the weekend revealed that villagers are forced to travel over 50km to Bulawayo getting the bodies of the dead to Mpilo Hospital or to private mortuaries.
To transport a body from Nyamandlovu to Bulawayo costs about R700, a figure that villagers there said was beyond their reach.
War veterans resettled in the Umguza district appealed to the government to establish a mortuary at Nyamandlovu clinic o help the financial stress associated with transport a dead body to a mortuary in Bulawayo.
These very high costs are unaffordable to most of us and at times we are forced to commit a cultural taboo by burying people on the same day that they die, without holding a funeral wake for them, said Jennifer Moyo, a mother of three.
A village development committee worker, Zoo Phiri said people who sent their relatives’ bodies to Mpilo often got them back varying degrees of decomposition because the mortuary at the hospital was always overloaded.
The councillor for Ward 16 in Nyamandlovu, David Moyo, said they had approached their legislator, Obert Mpofu, over the issue.