A BULAWAYO family is up in arms with Moonlight Funeral Services after the body of their grandmother decomposed before burial due to the service provider’s delays in rendering services.
Moonlight Funeral Services, however, shifted the blame to the family saying it supplied inaccurate information which resulted in payments being done for a wrong package that does not cover those aged above 80 years like the deceased.
The Ncube family said the company dragged its feet to assist them to bury their grandmother and the body ended up decomposing at home.
The woman died on Wednesday last week in Lupane and was only buried last Sunday after Moonlight Funeral Services assisted.
“They were delaying to assist us when we went to ask for their services for our grandmother who was their client. They first refused to provide their services for her saying she was above 80 years old and the package we had been paying for her was inaccurate. They blatantly said that even though we had been paying for her. Her body was already decomposing in our home,” said Mrs Nothando Ncube, a relative to the deceased.
Mrs Ncube said they had also paid for a package which included groceries but they never got them.
“The package we paid for included groceries. After all the hustle and delay, they gave us everything except the food allowance,” said Mrs Ncube.
The Chronicle managed to talk to the funeral service provider and challenges that the family encountered were attributed to failure to provide the correct information.
“As a reputable service provider, we offer different packages to incorporate all our clients and from these services we advise our customers to bring their identity documents and those of their dependents so that we highlight to them which package is best suited for their age. This family added their grandmother as a dependent on their package a few months ago. However, they did not bring us her identification document. They said they were going to bring it, but did not until her time of death,” said Moonlight public relations director Mr Abel Chimutanda.
“We asked them if their relative was below 80 years when they added her and they said yes she was indeed below 80 – only to find out that the dependent was above 80, meaning the package that they had registered under was an incorrect package as its limit is 65 years old. We had to go out of our way to make something available for them, but no matter how hard we tried to assist, the funds they had contributed if transferred to the correct package could not cater for food allowance but everything else.”
He said delays in assisting the family were as a result of the need to get in touch with their top management who are the only ones who can solve such cases.
“Our top management had to be alerted on what had transpired. According to the package that Ncube had registered, it states that anyone who is above 80 year of age is not catered for on it, hence our delay,” added Mr Chimutanda.
Moonlight Services urged its customers to be truthful with information they provide so that such cases are avoided. Chronicle
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