14 Nov 2016

The Funeral Parlours Association of Botswana has been launched to allow the undertakers to work together.

Seemingly, funeral parlours have been doing business independently without a term or structure in terms of representation and the players including executive members, came together to form an association.

Speaking at the launch recently, the association president, Mr Bushie Mosala said they have strategic partnerships in the SADC region like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho and even West Africa.
Mr Mosala added that the United States Funeral Parlours Association also recognised the local body.

“We have perfected our craft such as paperwork, body preparation, body expatriation and funeral itself together with a wide variety of hardware that come with it and not necessarily the focus of what we are about”, he said.

He added that through their global alliance and exchange programmes, which include training and up skilling, they have introduced new crafts such as embalming.

Embalming, he explained entailed new preservation methods whose history can be traced back to the ancient times in Egypt with the preservation of Pharaohs.

He also explained that there were new abilities to treat a body to an extent that it looked closer to life in some instances more than itself.

He further said in many developed countries like the United States of America, refrigeration as a method of preserving the dead was no longer a core craft but rather a part in the process of embalming.

For his part, Botswana Secondary Education Teachers Union (BOSETU) chief executive officer, Mr Othata Batsetswe said Funeral Parlours Association of Botswana got into partnership with BOSETU which will see its members having access to the body’s product offerings across the country.

“As a body we stand on a nationwide footprint which spans all major towns, cities and villages in Botswana,” Mr Batsetswe said.

He noted that the two-year old association consisted of over 20 funeral parlours in the country with many having several across different villages, towns and cities including remote areas.

Thus, he commended the association for having a strategic structure which utilised all the members’ united strengths in business whilst capitalising on its nationwide footprint. BOPA