Mahmoud Ahmad

 

The body of a 65-year-old Indian joiner has been—according to a local newspaper—languishing in a mortuary in Al-Ahsa for the last five months because his sponsor simply cannot be bothered to send his body back to India.



All required paperwork is complete and there is nothing else to do except for the sponsor to arrange his repatriation.



To add to the pain and suffering of the man’s family, both in Saudi Arabia and India, the sponsor stopped answering telephone calls several weeks ago.



How insensitive is that? The joiner, named Ali Hussain, came to the Kingdom 17 years ago and died of a heart attack.



He was employed by an Al-Khobar-based contracting company and worked on projects in Al-Khobar and Khafji. He had been working in Al-Ahsa for over four years and was initially the lone breadwinner of his family of eight.



The man’s eldest son subsequently joined him in the Kingdom and is now the family’s only breadwinner. The man leaves behind another son who is at school and three unmarried daughters. According to the Saudi press, the man’s wife wants to see him for the last time before he is buried in India.



No one can possibly imagine the pain and suffering of this family who knows that their loved one is dead and has been lying in a hospital morgue for the last five months.



Imagine the mental anguish to know that your father and husband has died and is unburied because of some silly bureaucracy and a negligent sponsor.



What justification is there in this? This is reprehensible Islamically, culturally, socially and morally. The dignity of the dead is being violated.



This is a clear violation of human rights and underscores the problem with bureaucracy, something that needs to be remedied.



The Ministry of Interior and the Health Affairs clearly regulate that mortuaries are not allowed to store bodies for longer than two months.



Bodies need to be buried or repatriated home. However, in spite of these regulations this man’s body remains in a mortuary.



Delaying the repatriation of bodies is not new. It is a problem that has been ongoing for many years and Saudi newspapers have been writing on this periodically.



We sometimes read about hospitals where bodies have remained for such a long time that they have even partly decomposed.



There was a recent report about a huge numbers of bodies for long periods of time at the Bani-Malek General Hospital in Jazan and that, as a result, Jazan Governor Prince Muhammad Bin Naser had ordered for the bodies to be buried or repatriated to their home countries.



A department needs to be formed to deal with this problem. The problem is at times particularly acute as some of the bodies have not been formally identified.



The authorities need to set up a special database with descriptions and details of unidentified bodies in hospital morgues. Families searching for loved ones could retrieve this information online, view photographs and then take steps to arrange funerals or repatriate bodies back to their home countries.



The problem most likely exists because there is probably more than one department involved in the process. If the entire issue was centralized into one department then the process would speed up.



A central body including representatives of the Ministry of Health, the police and the different governorates should come together and direct this organization.



 To enhance their work, foreign embassies should also be involved as they are in a suitable position to help repatriate bodies back to their families abroad.



With the exception of criminal cases, I do not see why the bodies of people who have died naturally or in non-suspect circumstances cannot be handed to their families within two months.



It does not take long for officials to collect photographs, DNA and other relevant information which could then be fed into a central database.



It is a shocking state of affairs that there are bodies in mortuaries in Saudi Arabia for long periods of time and that some are even decomposing.



Something fast and quick needs to be done to ensure there is not a repeat of what this Indian family is experiencing. If the sponsor is responsible for delaying the body from being sent home then he should be taken to task and severely punished.



The family of the deceased needs closure and desires peace. All that Hussain’s family wants is to say goodbye and bury him with honor and dignity.



The writer can be contacted at mahmad@saudigazette.com.sa. Twitter: @anajeddawi_eng