Accident victim’s father not happy with funeral arrangements

THE father of a victim of road accident at 7-Mile outside Lae on January 26 did not like the way the company involved had arranged for his son’s funeral and burial.
David Sembon, the father of the late Isaac Sembon, was not happy because most of his wishes were not met.
Sembon said the arrangement of tickets and the removal of his son’s body from the morgue were without his consent, and there were no proper communication to help the family repatriate the body.
He said because of the lack of cooperation, and the engagement of lawyers, by the company to arrange with the family, they were forced to bury Isaac at Boana Station, Gumbum village, on Feb 17.
“Isaac was not an employee and they (company) cannot tell my family to do this or that,” he said.
“My wish was to bury my son in Wewak and not at Boana.
“He is my son and I want to bury him in his land.
“I want to travel to Wewak on the date that I prefer, and come back on the date that I prefer.”
David claimed he was served a restraining order not to enter the company premises to seeking dialogue on the issue.
Managing director of Hornibrook NGI Ltd Matthew Lewis told The National that the company was devastated by the motor vehicle accident in which three people lost their lives and many people were injured.
“As a respected PNG company, we immediately provided medical assistance to all parties, Hornibrook and PMV passengers alike (financially covering the cost of treatment at Lae International Hospital, various Lae medical clinics and PIH),” Lewis said.
“To date we have provided in excess of K150,000 in medical support to all victims of the accident, and we medevaced two injured passengers to Port Moresby for medical treatment.
“After the accident, we reached out to the relatives of the deceased passengers and volunteered to contribute K5000 to their haus krai preparations, and committed to cover all post-mortem costs and all reasonable funeral home costs.
“The same donation was provided to the relatives of both the Hornibrook employees and to the relatives of the PMV passenger.”
Lewis said that despite David’s demand for immediate belkol costs and other flight arrangements costs “we respectively replied formally on Feb 6 that our offer of assistance would not exceed that of our original offer which was consistent with our support to our deceased employees.”
“It was during the verbal discussion over the demands that there were threat of legal proceedings to be made against Hornibrook, that our company felt that it was appropriate to instruct our lawyer to be the point of contact between the parties,” he said.
Lewis said the company did reconsider the commitment to provide in addition to the K5000 haus krai, the approximate K8000 funeral costs.