Durban - A Durban funeral parlour has been forced to cough up R40 000 and pay it back to a family who were victims of the Durban floods in April this year.
The R40 000 was paid out by the eThekwini Municipality to help the Buthelezi family of Amaoti, Inanda, to bury three family members who perished during the floods.
More than 300 people died in the floods, which lasted for about a week and left a trail of destruction.
According to Nonkonzo Buthelezi, during the floods they lost their mother, sister, a child of their sister and their house.
To help them with their steep burial costs, the eThekwini Municipality forked out R20 000 for their mother and R10 000 each for the other family members who died during the floods.
Since their mother already had funeral cover with a Durban funeral parlour known as Nafubhi Izimiso Zakhe Funeral Service, the task to bury her and the other family members was assigned to it.
So, while some families were grieving after the #KZNFloods, some municipal workers, politicians and funeral parlour employee in Durban saw an opportunity to loot. Stealing from deceased and grieving people? Disgustingly shameless. Thanks to EFF's @HhMkhaliphi for exposing this.
— Sihle Mavuso (@ZANewsFlash) August 24, 2022
She claimed that it later turned out that the funeral parlour was having some challenges and most of the work was outsourced to Beejay Funeral Services, also based in Durban.
“We went ahead with the burial of our family members without the money and after the mourning period, we started pursuing the matter by speaking to the councillor and others. We were pushed around wherever we went, but we did not give up. In the end, we were able to know what happened to the money,” Buthelezi told IOL on Wednesday.
She alleged that it later emerged that the money was paid to Beejay Funeral Services. The company was approached to provide answers to the family.
The matter was later taken up by Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi, a member of Parliament for the EFF, who then roped in Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC Sihle Zikalala to trace the money.
Beejay Funeral Services confirmed that the money was paid to it because it was helping Nafubhi and that the money was then transferred to the latter.
It said it was not totally involved in the matter except that Nafubhi uses its facilities like cold mortuary since it is still an upcoming business with no facilities.
“We are not involved at all in this matter, the money was paid to the family’s funeral company. Part of the aforesaid money has already been paid back to the Buthelezi family,” Beejay said regarding the matter.
Buthelezi confirmed that Nafubhi has already paid back R5 000 and made arrangements to pay the rest of the money in instalments.
“A brother to the sister who pocketed the money offered the R5 000 as compensation, saying he was not aware of the matter. So, yes, part of the money has been paid back to us and we are waiting for the rest,” Buthelezi confirmed.
Mkhaliphi confirmed her intervention and the arrangement to have the money paid back to the bereaved Buthelezi family. This was after a meeting which involved her, Zikalala, the two companies and eThekwini Municipality officials.
Efforts to contact Nafubhi yielded no results as their known cellphone number was off-line and WhatsApp messages were not responded to.
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