The Abuakwa North Municipal Assembly in the Eastern Region has revised restrictions imposed on burial and funeral services.
Bereaved families were barred from bringing corpses of their beloved home to be laid in state.
The Assembly directed that all corpses must be moved straight from mortuaries to the cemetery for private burial with not more than 25 mourners.
This was contained in a statement issued by the Municipal Coordinating Director Mrs. Ruth Woode on behalf of the Municipal Chief Executive Friday, January 5, 2021.
The statement also banned funeral service but allowed one-week observation with a limited attendance of 25 mourners conducted within two hours.
The decision by the Municipal Assembly then was to reinforce restrictions by the government in containing the spread of the second wave of coronavirus.
The directives caused inconveniences to many families who had burial and funeral ceremonies to be conducted, therefore continued to pray to the Assembly to revise the decision.
At the second session of the second general assembly at the assembly’s first (1st) ordinary meeting held on Wednesday, 31st March 2021, at the Assembly Hall in Akyem Kukurantumi, the concerns were raised in a motion filed by two Assembly members for debate.
Gifty Twum-Ampofo, member of parliament of Abuakwa North and former deputy minister of education in charge of TVET, concurred that the directive is relaxed to allow bereaved family conduct burial and funeral ceremonies.
Other members of the Assembly including officials of Ghana Health Service cautiously agreed to the revision.
The Assembly, therefore, reached a consensus that families can now bring non-covid-19 corpses home to be laid for public viewing and burial service before burial.
The Acting municipal health director, Mrs. Rebecca Dede Bantey, commended the Assembly for their commitment to fighting the pandemic and added that the restrictions by the assembly helped a long way to curb the spread in the municipality.
She further admonished the assembly members to be ambassadors in the fight against the pandemic especially now that the restrictions have been eased in the municipality.
Abuakwa North from January 1st, 2021 to March 31st, 2021 tested sixty-seven (67) suspected COVID 19 cases of which twenty-five (25) persons tested positive all the twenty-five (25) persons have recovered living no active case with seven results pending. This was disclosed by the health directorate.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Obed Ansah
