Mortuary workers back Mahama; demand more mortuaries in Ghana

The Mortuary Workers Association is calling on the government to prioritize a ‘one health facility and one mortuary’ policy.

The mortuary workers are convinced that more morgues in Ghana would help ease pressure on the major health facilities in the country.

It would also help in eliminating the situation where bereaved families attack mortuary workers over missing dead bodies of their relatives due to choked morgues, they added.

General Secretary for Mortuary Workers Association Richard Kofi Jordan made the appeal while speaking on the Yensempa morning show on Onua FM on Monday, October 5.

He reiterated the need for morgues at every health facility.

He told the host, Anokyewaaba Adwoa Serwaa, that Ghana needs more mortuaries to mitigate the pressure on major hospitals as well as mortuary workers at various hospitals.

“I think that we need more mortuaries in the country so that distance from the health facility to the next mortuary would not be a burden to bereaved families.”

He posited that the country’s health facilities should be structured in such a way that it would always come with a mortuary department “because we can’t build a hospital without mortuaries knowing very well that people might die in the hospital”.

He further kicked against and censured hospital owners for isolating mortuaries from the facilities.

Kofi Jordan said Muslims per their religion need a separate morgue to take care of their deceased relatives before burial, therefore backing the promise made by the former president, John Dramani Mahama, to build mortuaries in Zongo communities for them.

Kofi Jordan briefly touched on their conditions of service which instigated leadership of the Mortuary Workers Association declaring a now-suspended nationwide strike on October 1, 2020.

He revealed that the government through the health ministry and National Labour Commission (NLC) had negotiated and agreed to address their concerns in bettering their conditions of service.

But he was livid at how mortuary workers have been undervalued and subjected to maltreatment by health facility administrators.

He wants the services of the mortuary workers to be respected, recognized and seen as essential service to better healthcare delivery in Ghana.