More than seven years after the Port Kaituma Morgue was built, the refrigeration system has finally been installed, relegating to the past, the daily purchase of thousands of dollars worth of ice and the attack on corpses by rats.
Residents of the North West District community are thankful for this development but pointed out that the facility still lacks staff and a few other necessary pieces of equipment.
Speaking to Stabroek News yesterday, resident Richard Allen said that extensive work, which included cleaning the interior and exterior of the morgue as well as the installation of the freezer was done last week.
“They finally installed the freezer. They checked the temperature and so and it is now ready for use,” he said. However, Allen said that there is still no cutting table which is needed for post-mortem examinations or filtering system for the waste water.
“After all this time I feel so good that it is finally in place. It should have been there before. Pressure had to be placed on the administration before things were put in place,” he said adding that there hasn’t been any death in the community or surrounding area since to really test the system.
He noted that with the refrigeration system now in place, it will be less expensive for persons who will also not have to worry about body parts of their dead relatives being removed by rodents. He noted that system also brings with it a healthier environment for residents as those same rats also take up residence within the community posing an unhealthy situation for residents.
Allen pointed out that while this is a move in a positive direction, there is still no staff to run the facility. He said that it is still under the control of the Port Kaituma Hospital. He noted too that there is also no guard and the guard at the hospital will have to now be responsible for keeping an eye on the morgue, which is located across the road.
The refrigeration system arrived at the morgue some time early last month. Nigel Fisher, the acting Regional Executive Officer (REO) when contacted had admitted that the freezer was uninstalled explaining that an external cooling component has to be installed. That component was apparently recently acquired, thus paving the way for the installation of the freezer.
The morgue, which was built six years ago by the government in collaboration with the Caribbean Development Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency, cost some $9.6 million to construct.
The arrangement according to what Stabroek News was told was that the government was responsible for the furnishing of the morgue.
Over the years, the facility had been left in a state of disrepair, with cracks in the walls and grass in the compound growing taller than the building.
Persons who were forced to utilize the morgue detailed horror stories of how they had to spend as much as $10,000 per day to buy ice and purchase formalin to ensure that their relatives’ bodies did not decompose. There were instances, this newspaper was told when relatives turned up to find body parts missing.
The corpses were usually stored in a wooden box. In the event that there was more than one body at a given time, then the other bodies were placed on the floor.
