State mortuary denies serious allegations
Head of Department admits he is aware of the practice.
The Head of Department at the Roodepoort State Mortuary, André Stander, has admitted that he is aware of the practice of ‘irregular referrals’ to private funeral parlours, but denied that any of his employees are involved.
The practice of irregular referrals involves one party referring the bereaved to a specific funeral parlour, which in itself is not wrong, but it is done in exchange for ‘commission’ which is recovered by the parlour by adding it to the cost of the funeral.
This information came to light after a second independent source came forward, alleging that employees at the State Mortuary are involved in making these referrals to a specific chain of funeral parlours.
Read the initial article here: Serious allegations against the funeral industry
Stander said sometimes parlours would treat his employees to food treats such as hamburgers, but that was above board. He said further that he was not aware of any of his employees being involved in this practice. He also said that it’s easy to prove if someone is involved in this practice but not whether money changed hands. He agreed that if it is true that the money is recovered from the client, the practice is wrong.
He went on to say that in his opinion these malicious allegations are due to a bitter feud between two chains of funeral parlours.
Stander said if anyone has hard evidence that his employees are involved he would take action against the culprits.
When confronted with the fact that there are at least three people working at the mortuary, including himself, who have relatives working for the one of the specified parlours, he said it was a coincidence and that there was no sinister reason behind it.
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