By Wandile Dludlu.
Africa-Press – Eswatini. Government has by design allowed a situation where all public healthcare facilities have the lowest intake capacity in Mortuaries, neglected tools leading to broken fridges, broken trays and sometimes no protective-ware for the least staffed department of the entire ecosystem in the public healthcare system.
EmaSwati when they fall sick and or wish to do medical reviews, do so because they wish to edify their chances of life and general wellbeing as enshrined under Section 15, the right to life in the Constitution Act No 1 of 2005.
We however know that sometimes, we end-up dying because of various reasons but, what one wishes to highlight is the services that once we pass away as citizens of this country, we get or not in these facilities.
The responsibility by Government on us as citizens doesn’t end when we take our last breath, but goes beyond that, the Mbabane Government Hospital, as an example has over 500 bed capacity as the National Referral Facility.
But its mortuary capacity is a mere forty(40) if we take the old facility(Cold Room) combined with the new building, clearly, this falls way short, not to mention how neglected and badly kept it is.
In fact, the majority of public healthcare facilities either have no Mortuary at all, or if they do, it’s long broken and abandoned as our lived experiences have been.
This forces families to procure private service providers who have become the biggest cash cow many co-owned by members of the royal family and elites.
What stands distinctly different between the two is that Government facilities ordinarily should by design not meant to provide services with the purpose of profit pursuit, thus prices can be way reasonable for even the poorest Swazi.
Whilst private Mortuaries and Parlors equally provide services but with a clear mandate of making profit, this turns to push every cost to the margins exponentially.
In fact it usually puts very heavy strain on bereaved families, many of whom are poor in the country over sixty percent(60%) for that matter.
Why does the Tinkhundla Government not care for emaSwati by pushing families of bereaved to have no option of using efficient Mortuaries so as to push down significantly the burial cost to ensure affordability of our deaths.
It’s double jeopardy for bereaved emaSwati every week to be left in the hands of exorbitant funeral parlors, making death even cruelly expensive.
This is one of the social causes that exacerbates poverty generationally as such, an inevitable human phenomenon gets milked by market players without State intervention, as in our case.
Why should emaSwati still think they have a Government that is suppose to ensure that basic goods and services continue to flow in their direction when water, electricity, education, cabbages, bread, data, internet and even mortuary services are privatized, this makes life super expensive on recurrent things, minimizing chances for giant leap forward in development for and by ordinary people.
We spend too much of our hard earned resources carrying on basic services than investing in strategic life changing projects as emaSwati because Government is deliberately absent and under-developing the Nation for the benefit of private entrepreneurs who have no mercy nor care.
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