New Tema Mortuary Structure Abandoned

Construction of the new state-of-art mortuary building, which successive governments have used as a campaign tool on election platforms, now seems to have been abandoned to its fate. Work on the project came to a standstill not long after the 2012 general elections.

Aside the fact that weeds are gradually taking over the new building which residents in Tema thought would have been completed by now, following the kind of attention it garnered during the last general elections from candidates who wanted to win political power, the building is currently at the lentil level.

The decision to construct the new facility became imminent when the old mortuary gained media attention in 2011, as a result of the fact that the over 50-year-old dilapidated mortuary was said to have become breeding grounds for mice and rats, which fed on corpses in the facility, which also had no preservation equipment.

Robert Kempes Ofosuware and Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, who were parliamentary candidates for Tema East and West respectively, and Irene Naa Torshie Addo, Member of Parliament (MP) for Tema West, used this facility to attract votes for themselves.

It was, therefore, obvious that after the election, work on the project would continue unabated. Unfortunately, nothing has been going on as far the continuation of the building is concerned, leaving residents in Tema and beyond who patronise the facility in limbo.

A visit there recently by the Tema File showed that work had stopped, while the old mortuary is also not being patronised Tema for obvious reasons.

In an interview with some of the workers at the mortuary last Monday, the Tema File gathered that people no longer patronise the facility, and rather preferred to send their dead to funeral homes or the Akuse Government Mortuary, where their corpses would be kept in a better and conducive facility.

The situation has, therefore, affected the revenue generation of the old facility.

A worker told the paper that despite the fact that the Tema General Hospital Mortuary provides the best embalment service in the Greater Accra Region, the weak structure of the facility coupled with broken equipment, could be reasons why revenue generation had drastically declined.