Beit Bridge District Hospital has conducted pauper´s burials for nine unclaimed bodies of suspected border jumpers that had been unclaimed at the mortuary for several months.

The bodies, some of which were picked up by police along the Limpopo River, had been lying in the mortuary since October last year.

The hospital administrator, Mr Nelson Mashiri, said the bodies were buried on Saturday at Makakavhule Cemetery outside the border town. “Police had failed to locate the relatives of the deceased and the unclaimed bodies were at different stages of decomposition, due to poor refrigeration at our mortuary,” said the official.

The Department of Social Services contracted a funeral undertaker, who provided coffins and transport for the bodies to the cemetery, situated about 10km out of Beit Bridge.

Mashiri said some of the bodies were of people who had given incorrect addresses at the time of admission. The pauper´s burials are usually conducted every two months. The unclaimed corpses had been lying at the hospital mortuary for several months, resulting in pressure on the facility.

The mortuary was designed to cater for only six bodies at a given time, but due to the ever-increasing number of uncollected bodies, the facility has been forced to accommodate as many as 60 bodies, mostly border jumpers found along the Limpopo River.

The large number of unclaimed bodies has resulted in the mortuary’s cooling system´s constantly breaking down. The mortuary is currently undergoing refurbishment, following assistance from World Vision.