Dr. Andrew ArkutuN
Management of the Lashibi Funeral Home has decried the lack of comprehensive training for mortuary attendants, saying it is high time the situation changed.
Speaking at a press conference held Wednesday on their premises, Dr. Andrew Arkutu, Managing Director of Lashibi Funeral Home, disclosed that there is a growing concern for people providing funeral services in the country because every hospital, private or public usually has a place for keeping the dead.
“Very little attention or importance has been given to the training of the people who are responsible for taking care of bodies entrusted into their care until their families take them away. There are hundreds of mortuary service attendants throughout this country but there is no recognised training programme for any of them,” he bemoaned, adding, “We in Lashibi (Funeral Home) believe that this situation must change!”
He stressed the need to not only train these personnel but also provide them with the right working tools to make work more comfortable for them to enhance quality service delivery.
“We should train these people. We should give them the right equipment they need and provide an environment that makes it comfortable for them to do their job very well,” Dr. Arkutu hinted.
On chemicals used for the embalmment of bodies, he disclosed that there are a host of chemicals employed in the embalming processes in the funeral business, with the commonest one being formaline, which is a basic preservative.
He revealed that the Lashibi Funeral Home uses at least six to seven different chemicals in embalming a single body, mentioning that the Ghana Standards Board (GSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have, for the past 15 years, approved every single drop of chemical used in their day-to-day activities.
By Nii Adjei MensahfioN