By Nosihle Zulu
Power outages continue to hurt funeral parlours since their businesses rely on electricity for both mortuary facilities and offices.
Funeral businesses suffer from power outages managing director Elsabe Basilio revealed the financial crisis that the funeral parlours endured due to outages, especially smaller businesses located in rural areas.
“Mortuaries are being buried under the costs of alternative power, amounting to an estimated R156 million a year,” she said.
According to the National Health Act, all funeral homes must have an alternative power supply such as generators to keep the refrigeration facility cold if power goes out.
However, this results in huge costs as diesel is expensive and the generators must be maintained.
Basilio told Vutivi News that 10 hours of no power a day could cost a small funeral home between R2500 to R5000 per day. Bigger companies paid more because they had larger refrigeration facilities.
“Certain funeral directors are equipped with inverters and UPS systems, at huge expense to their businesses,” she noted.
The increase in expenses is directly proportional to the cost of funerals and premiums on funeral insurance products, which hurts the funeral director and the public.
Basilio also said that in South Africa it was not the norm to embalm the deceased unless the family requested it or for repatriation purposes.
“If power outages occur for a long period, we will have to start embalming the deceased daily leading to an additional cost to the funeral home and ultimately to the family of the deceased,” she explained.
“Those NFDA members who can afford it are taking steps to remove their funeral homes from the national grid and supply their electricity through solar, inverters and UPS,” Basilio said.
However, in some regions, the absence of electricity interrupts the water supply, which is another crucial factor for funeral homes.
“All these factors can lead to the decay of human remains,” Basilio said.
She further revealed that as funeral directors, it was their responsibility to obey all cultures and religious beliefs, including those that took up to three weeks to cremate or bury their loved ones.
This was a huge challenge if there was no electricity.
Power outages also interrupted office work, Basilo said.
This could result in fraudulent activities and a duplication of work, since important details were captured manually
Basilo has pleaded with the government to intervene sooner than later.
“If there is no intervention, small funeral homes will close their businesses resulting in job losses, loss of revenue and an increase in funeral costs, including an increase in the premiums of funeral products,” she warned.
Teboho Ditabe, who is the director of Royal Empire Funerals in Soweto, elaborated on the risks of power cuts.
“In a mortuary, a body has a certain temperature that it must be under for a certain time. Thus, power outages pose a greater risk of fast-tracking the decomposition in bodies,” said Ditabe.
He also said that due to crime in townships, they could not fully depend on solar power because of theft.
“Another challenge is that we don’t charge clients anything extra. The policy fee remains constant whether there is load-shedding or not. This results in a loss of profit if there is load-shedding and the implementation of alternatives,” said Ditabe.
