Mukono Municipality Member of Parliament Betty Nambooze Bakireke has turned one of her ambulances into a funeral van.
This is part of her efforts to reduce the usage of ambulances in the greater Mukono area as funeral vans.
The ambulance turned into a funeral van has been operating in Mukono under her supervision for the past five years.
The idea for the MP to turn the ambulance into a funeral van originated at the launch of a new ambulance donated by Mukono Woman Member of Parliament Hanifer Nabukeera Luswata earlier this month.
Nambooze said, well as the ambulances are necessary in the carrying on the day to day health related activities with the area, many people had started using the vans to take dead bodies to different destinations in the country.
“Ambulances take sick people, not dead bodies. Whenever you use it to take dead bodies, it would become a threat to the other sick people. I don’t know why we usually make the dead more important that the sick.” Nambooze said
She then pledged to facilitate the purchase of a funeral van to ensure that the people in the area make a distinction between the two and their intended purposes.
Mukono has previously not owned a funeral van. It usually relied on funeral services from Kampala and Wakiso.
A source from the Nambooze camp says, Nambooze’s new love for funeral vans stems from the increasing costs of transportation of dead bodies, especially those suffering from the deadly Covid 19 pandemic in Kampala.
It costs up to six millions for a funeral service company to transport, burry a dead body in the greater Mukono area.
The move to turn an ambulance into a funeral van has widely been criticized by Mukono dwellers saying the MP is priotizing the dead.
