Corpse chaos at MKM

MASERU – THERE was chaos at the beleaguered MKM Burial Society last Friday when angry workers deliberately swapped corpses. The workers wanted to sabotage the company and its boss, Simon Thebe-ea-Khale, for not paying their salaries for years.

Corpses that were supposed to go to Mafeteng were put in coffins destined for Leribe. Simon Thebe-ea-Khale was forced to intervene to avoid giving families the wrong corpses.

He spent hours trying to verify the identity of the corpses. In some cases, he had to work with families to get the identities right.

Thebe-ea-Khale confirmed the incident and said he had to call a former employee to help him sort out the corpses after his team of more than 40 went on strike.

“Corpses that were supposed to be in Mafeteng were swapped in the coffins with those of Leribe,” he said.

Thebe-ea-Khale said since he noticed that the employees’ wanted to ruin his reputation, he ordered them not to report for duty.

“I told the employees to go rest at home since they were not ready to work,” he said.

The chaos started on Friday morning after the workers went on strike and refused to help customers.

They used a company car to block the gate to the MKM’s main mortuary in the Maseru Industrial Area. They complained that Thebe-ea-Khale had not paid their salaries for years.

Thebe-ea-Khale said the workers, some of whom are his relatives, agreed to work as volunteers when the company went broke after a bruising and long-drawn legal battle with the Central Bank of Lesotho.

He said he reached the agreement with the workers soon after the company’s buildings, which were its major source of income, were auctioned by the liquidator to pay off its debts to hundreds of thousands of investors and creditors.

Thebe-ea-Khale said he promised to start paying salaries after winning back the properties. The workers, however, accuse Thebe-ea-Khale of going back on his word to help them with small allowances to pay their bills and buy food.

This is the third time this year that MKM workers have downed tools over salaries. In previous incidents, they picketed outside the mortuary and refused to help customers who wanted to collect their dead for burial.

On Friday, the workers took matters further by swapping corpses and blocking the gate. Thebe-ea-Khale said none of the workers wanted to tell him where they had put the car keys.

“They all beat about the bush and never gave me answers,” Thebe-ea-khale said.

He said because families were waiting to get their dead he asked the police and the army to help him open the gate.

“I pinpointed five prime suspects to be interrogated.”

The suspects were taken to the police station for interrogation. He said the car keys were recovered from one of the suspects.

Thebe-ea-Khale said he had information that some of the workers had been paid by rivals to sabotage him. Others, he added, wanted to kill his business after landing jobs elsewhere.

He said he no longer needs the services of all his 40 employees because his business is operating well without them.

The MKM empire collapsed in 2007 after its insurance and investment subsidiaries were closed by the Central Bank of Lesotho for operating without licences.

The Central Bank said the businesses were pyramid schemes that had fleeced thousands of people of their money.

The companies were offering interest rates of as much as 60 percent per annum. By some estimates, the business owed half a billion maloti to about 400 000 people.

Since then, Thebe-ea-Khale has been fighting efforts to liquidate the subsidiaries. He, however, has been at the losing end of those battles.

Yet he maintains that the businesses were genuine and profitable. He sees himself as a victim of political schemes and the jealousy of insurance and banking firms he was outcompeting.

The courts have however ruled that the businesses were illegal and essentially pyramid schemes that were enticing investors with promises of huge but unsustainable interest rates.

The burial society is Thebe-ea-Khale’s only surviving business but it too has been in decline since his troubles started.

The burial society is not getting new members at a time when most of its policies have matured and are no longer attracting premiums.

’Malimpho Majoro