Withdrawal of State-assisted funeral facility ill-timed

forthcoming Christmas and New Year festivities.
The police always mount road blocks and increase highway patrols during such periods in their effort to tame the traffic jungle but statistics indicate that the death toll on our roads is on the increase despite these measures.
According to records, human error accounts for more than 85 percent of the road accidents which means most of the accidents can be avoided. Drunken driving, speeding, overloading, unroadworthy vehicles and fatigue have been cited as major contributing factors to accidents while a small percentage has been blamed on poor roads and increased volume of traffic.
Accidents do not only deprive families of bread winners but at times the bereaved families are so overwhelmed by death especially where many members of a single family are involved that they cannot cope. We have had in the past cases of as many as 10 members of a single family being killed in an accident and others injured.
In such cases the single bereaved family has to meet the funeral costs of such a large number of people while at the same time pay medical bills for the injured. It was because of this realisation that Government came up with the State-assisted funeral scheme meant to assist families under such circumstances.
The idea behind the State-assisted funeral was to lessen the burden on the bereaved families especially in situations whereby many members of a single family are killed in an accident. In most cases whereby Government has assisted families to bury their loved ones, the accidents would have been declared state of disasters.
The decision by the Government to withdraw the State-assisted funeral scheme is therefore ill-timed given the fact that the country, as we have already stated, continues to witness increased death toll on its roads. The withdrawal of the State-assisted funeral facility spells doom for bereaved families who might find themselves failing to cope with the costs of burying their loved ones.
According to the Secretary for Transport, Communications and Infrastructure Development, Mr Pattison Mbiriri, the Government was surrendering the responsibility of burying road accident victims to transport operators.
“The reality now is that it may not be possible for Government to carry the financial burden of burying accident victims and the obligation would be on you as transport operators,” he said.
It is logical for transport operators to take over the burden of burying accident victims but as Mr Mbiriri rightly observed – how many of them are in a position to carry the financial burden? If Mr Mbiriri doubts the operators’ capacity to carry the burden why is Government surrendering this responsibility meant to lessen the suffering of bereaved families who might find themselves stuck with the bodies of their loved ones after failing to raise money to bury them?
The Government in our view should continue to assist needy families to bury their loved ones and try to recover the costs from operators. It is only under such an arrangement that bereaved families can be guaranteed assistance.
Another alternative will be to come up with a fund whereby operators contribute a certain amount of money to a given arm of Government every month and this money is then used to assist the bereaved families.
We want to once again appeal to Government to reconsider its position regarding the issue of State-assisted funerals to avoid worsening the plight of bereaved families. It is a fact that disaster usually strikes when one is least prepared for it and this is the time when cushioning from facilities such as the State-assisted funerals is needed most. The State-assisted funerals facility should just continue because it’s very necessary.