Chairman,
Medical Advisory Committee of the hospital, Dr. Tony Okam, said this after the
Deputy Senate President visited the hospital to sympathize with the injured,
weekend, that the hospital decided to follow all necessary due processes and
documentation before releasing the corpses.
Okam, who
explained that part of the processes included forensic reports by pathologist,
noted that the measure would facilitate identification of relations of the dead
in an event government decides to compensate them.
According to
him, “the problem we had was that when government wanted to pay compensation on
the immigration saga, there was the issue of relations coming to claim
the corpses.
“We now said
that the forensic pathologists have to come and identify the casualties but you
know religion came into play as some Muslims will like to bury their loved
ones.
“We now asked
what we should do under the circumstance, and we agreed that we should prepare
a letter of undertaking, which the family (of the deceased) will have to sign
as well as the police.
“Under that
circumstance, we will let go but ideally, we agreed with the forensic
pathologists and the police that there must be autopsy report but what do we do
in a situation whereby the relations of the deceased want to bury the dead
immediately according to their religious belief.
“It was not easy
trying to achieve what we can do and we made it clear to them that they have to
sign it and the police also have to sign. So we have been able to release three
corpses.
“We had 14
(corpses). Remember if government decides to pay compensation now many people
will come and say I am the relation, we had an issue with that just
recently.”
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