MARGAO: As part of former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s Mission Salcete, the BJP government, including then Health Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, made tall claims of a state-of-the-art morgue facility at Margao. This was after people complained of taking home decayed bodies and even sometimes rat-eaten ones from the terrible morgue at Hospicio Hospital, Margao.
In 2012, Parrikar announced a morgue facility on the Monte Hill, Margao, within the TB Hospital premises. A new wing was built by the Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation (GSIDC) and awaited inauguration at the hands of Parrikar.
But the January 2014 Ruby construction collapse and the death of 31 workers in Chaudi-Canacona caused a panic situation as to where to store 31 bodies. Parrikar intervened then and the Monte Hill morgue was thrown open sans inauguration to pack in 20 bodies.
Subsequently, the government dismantled the dilapidated morgue at Hospicio, and the morgue at TB Hospital became the lone morgue in Salcete, which is under the jurisdiction of the medical superintendent and medical officers of TB Hospital.
But now the morgue has started failing; from four non-functioning cubicles, the number has shot up to 16. The are numerous complaints of decaying bodies, smelling corpses, packing in three bodies in one cubicle which was not freezing. And the chaos continues.
Margao has been without a morgue facility for over eight days, and the GSIDC is unaware of the breakdown.
“In case of an unnatural death, the body has to be taken to GMC morgue, kept there, brought back to Margao for post-mortem in the morning and then taken back. The plight of the families is horrible,” explains Rajesh Sawant, whose family went through the ordeal of spending an entire day transporting their relative’s body.
“We give a letter stating that there is no place here in our morgue, and on the basis of that letter, GMC or Ponda PHC is allowed to admit the body,” said Dr Oscar Lourenco, medical officer at T B Hospital.
MLAs Vijai Sardesai, Digambar Kamat, Avertano Furtado, Caitu D’Silva, Maria Rebello Churchill Alemao, and many others are believed to call the morgue to run their influence to admit a body to the morgue, but the authorities can’t do anything since the morgue is non-functional within hardly two years of its construction.
“So pathetic is the morgue that it even doesn’t have a plug point. Nowadays, morgues are obsolete, since all MLAs and ZPs and sarpanchas, as an act of goodwill, lend their mobile morgues to store the dead at home a day before the funeral. But in Hindu tradition, we don’t keep the body at home, so we have to take it to a morgue,” stated Advait Dessai from Aquem.
He stated that he had asked the TB Hospital in-charge if he could get a private mobile morgue and if the Monte Hill morgue could store the body of his mother for 24 hours until the funeral. The morgue was willing, but they had no plug point to connect the mobile morgue.
The nurses who are alone at night feel pained to turn back grieving people accompanied with bodies, but they are forced to send people to GMC, which is miles away. Health Minister Francis D’Souza had asserted that he will look into the matter.
