News / National
Bulawayo finally secures cremator
07 Feb 2018 at 07:35hrs | Views
The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has finally secured the release of a cremator that had for a long time been held in Durban, South Africa owing to contractual glitches.
BCC chamber secretary Sikhangele Zhou said they finally managed to meet the storage costs, in the process facilitating its release.
"The cremator has reached the South African port but the contractor had failed to pay for its release from the storage facilities," Zhou said.
"We are engaged with his lawyers and the people who are holding it and we made the payment last week to the South African warehouse.
"We took time to raise the foreign currency as you are aware how difficult it is to raise foreign currency. So we're now waiting for them to transport it to Zimbabwe and have it installed," she said.
While she did not reveal how much was paid for its release, previous council minutes indicate that town clerk Christopher Dube had submitted a report to council seeking authority to pay R120 000 to the South African Revenue Authority as clearance costs to facilitate the release of the cremator.
The city has only one cremator situated at West Park Cemetery.
There has been a low uptake of cremation despite the local authority encouraging its residents to take up the idea as a substitute to conventional burial in a bid to mitigate the dwindling of burial space in the city.
On average, the monthly rate of cremation stands at 12 and the majority being the Hindu who culturally and religiously believe in cremation.
Initially, council had paid the contractor $97 120 as a deposit for the cremator before the contractor later failed to pay the clearance costs.
After realising that chances of recovering these funds were very slim and in order to mitigate the loss, council decided to take over the contract from Durban to Zimbabwe, including the installation.
"We weighed our losses in terms of abandoning it or let the contractor bring it at his own time or we take over the contract and bring it on our own then we subtract the money we would have used.
"We realised that it may be more expensive than the original contract but we felt it was better than losing altogether what we had already started," Zhou said.
She, however, promised residents that cremation services will soon be back to normal although she did nt give the time frame.
For cremation, an adult resident of the city is charged $63 if cremation is conducted during the week while for weekends and holidays the charge rises to $72.
However, non-residents are charged at different percentages of citizen's rates depending on the day of cremation but the average is $95.
BCC chamber secretary Sikhangele Zhou said they finally managed to meet the storage costs, in the process facilitating its release.
"The cremator has reached the South African port but the contractor had failed to pay for its release from the storage facilities," Zhou said.
"We are engaged with his lawyers and the people who are holding it and we made the payment last week to the South African warehouse.
"We took time to raise the foreign currency as you are aware how difficult it is to raise foreign currency. So we're now waiting for them to transport it to Zimbabwe and have it installed," she said.
While she did not reveal how much was paid for its release, previous council minutes indicate that town clerk Christopher Dube had submitted a report to council seeking authority to pay R120 000 to the South African Revenue Authority as clearance costs to facilitate the release of the cremator.
The city has only one cremator situated at West Park Cemetery.
There has been a low uptake of cremation despite the local authority encouraging its residents to take up the idea as a substitute to conventional burial in a bid to mitigate the dwindling of burial space in the city.
Initially, council had paid the contractor $97 120 as a deposit for the cremator before the contractor later failed to pay the clearance costs.
After realising that chances of recovering these funds were very slim and in order to mitigate the loss, council decided to take over the contract from Durban to Zimbabwe, including the installation.
"We weighed our losses in terms of abandoning it or let the contractor bring it at his own time or we take over the contract and bring it on our own then we subtract the money we would have used.
"We realised that it may be more expensive than the original contract but we felt it was better than losing altogether what we had already started," Zhou said.
She, however, promised residents that cremation services will soon be back to normal although she did nt give the time frame.
For cremation, an adult resident of the city is charged $63 if cremation is conducted during the week while for weekends and holidays the charge rises to $72.
However, non-residents are charged at different percentages of citizen's rates depending on the day of cremation but the average is $95.
Source - dailynews
