The Insider - Bulawayo may allow residents to dig graves

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The Insider - October 2007

Bulawayo may allow residents to dig graves

The Bulawayo City Council is to consider allowing residents to dig graves for their relatives if they want to avoid the current delays caused by the shortage of graves.

The council had contracted private operators to dig the graves but they have not been able to meet demand as they are frequently deserted by employees because their remuneration is too low. The contractors have in turn argued that the fee they are paid by the council is too low.

The contract to dig graves for the council was first awarded to Simultaneous Investments in 2001. The company operated until August 2004 and was not prepared to renew the contract. Opassum Trading took over in September 2005 but it terminated its contract in August because the money it was paid by the council was unsustainable.

Speaking at the full council meeting last week Stars Mathe, the councillor for Cowdray Park, said the council should seriously consider allowing those residents who wished to dig graves for their relatives to do so because the delays they faced were too costly for them.

She said she had heard that some people were being asked to wait for as long as one week before they could be allocated a grave. This made the funeral very expensive as they had to keep the body in a mortuary and feed mourners until the burial.

Mathe said some of the residents had pleaded with her to be allowed to dig the graves themselves as this would take them a matter of hours and thus help them save costs.

Executive mayor, Japhet Ndabeni—Ncube said the council’s management should look into the issue and see how best it could be handled.

The council’s executive committee had heard that none of the contractors hired by the council had ever managed to meet demand for graves. Their major complaint was that the bid price was quickly eroded by inflation and as a result they were usually short of money to ensure quality service.

There were 805 burials in August up from 747 in July.

Following the departure of Opassum, the council had allowed its health department to hire 50 people as contract workers to dig the graves. As an incentive the workers were to be paid additional money per grave if they exceeded the agreed number.

The council was, however, not able to recruit the 50 workers it needed because the money it paid was not attractive enough.

Posted- 9 October 2007

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