PICK n Pay Kingsburgh staff and shoppers were left traumatised after one of the supermarket’s employees collapsed and died at the till on May 5.
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According to witnesses, the incident happened around 14:30 but the corpse lay on the shop’s floor while operations carried on as usual in the store until it was removed at 17:30. An employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said she was left deeply disturbed after they had to work with a dead body in the store. The employee also confirmed that the deceased was a foreign national.
Ayanda Msweli, a broadcaster who works closely with the provincial government, arrived at the scene around 16:30 before the body was processed and removed. He decried the fact that the store did not close to protect the staff from the trauma of seeing their dead colleague.
“They had to continue working as though nothing had happened, regardless of the trauma they had suffered from losing their colleague so abruptly. From around 14:30 until 17:30, Pick n Pay continued business as usual with no regard for the mental health of its workers, not to mention the rights of customers whose religious beliefs do not permit them to be in the same vicinity as that of a corpse,” said Msweli in the statement.
Questions regarding the incident were sent to Pick n Pay, but a response had not been received at the time of publishing.
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