Pitseng can be buried in a govt facility but govt must pay- Attorney
The Attorney General, Mmako Mpelegang Abram, has confirmed that her office will not be held responsible for the expenses incurred in maintaining the dead body of Gaoberekwe Pitseng that has been lying at a morgue in Gantsi since December 2021.
In response to The Voice enquiries, Abram said that it is the family of Pitseng that is responsible for the mortuary bill that stands at P700k.
“The responsibility for payment of mortuary bills is that of the family of the deceased. Any bill that would have accumulated due to Mr Pitseng’s refusal to comply with Court Orders of both the High Court and the Court of Appeal,” she said in the written response.
The Pitseng family spokesperson, Smith Moeti, recently told The Voice Newspaper that they would not be held responsible for the bill since it is the government that kept the body of their relative at the Gantsi Mortuary and refused to allow them to bury him at Metsiamanong in the CKGR.
He confirmed that the family is finalising documents in order to approach the African Court of Justice to intervene in the standoff but it is a lengthy process that requires many stakeholders to make inputs.
However, the AG said that they were not aware of any pending matter at the continental court.
“We have not been served with papers other than the ones relating to the cases which were brought before us and have been concluded by our courts,” Abram said.
Meanwhile, a renowned attorney, Boingotlo Toteng, has opined that the owner of the Gantsi Mortuary where the body of Gaoberekwe Pitseng has been kept for close to three years has a legal right to dispose of the body in a government-owned cemetery.
In an interview this week, Toteng said that the first thing they should do is approach the High Court and seek an order to bury the body, to minimise expenses that are now estimated at over P750k.
“The mortuary owner can seek an order to dispose of the body and bury at a government facility, being council cemetery, because they cannot keep the body indefinitely. It is not possible,” he said. He added that since it is the government departments that delivered the body at the mortuary, they are responsible for the bill.
Toteng stated that since the matter was decided by the Court of Appeal, the family has limited options once the body has been buried.
The owner of the mortuary, Joyce Dikop, said on Tuesday that she is confident that a miracle was about to happen and that things are moving towards final resolution to the matter after she approached the District Commissioner’s office for intervention.
“I am waiting for the District Commissioner to give guidance after I approached the office recently. Officers from the S&CD recently came to assess the situation and promised they were coming back. I think they are doing something about the case,” she said.
According to Dikop, Pitseng was hospitalised at Gantsi Primary Hospital, then referred to Princess Marina Hospital where he died.
His body was transferred back to Gantsi and delivered by the Gantsi Hospital staff to the mortuary in company of officers from the Department of Social and Community Development (S&CD) since he was registered as destitute.
zvakaoma