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Family allowed to bury former KAA employee

Thursday, January 14th, 2021 00:00 | By
Kenya Airways and Kenya Airport Authority staff. Photo/COURTESY

It is a reprieve for the family of a former Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) employee after a Nairobi Court allowed them to proceed with the burial. 

In her ruling, Milimani Commercial court Senior Resident Magistrate Margaret Murage allowed the family of Rose Achieng' Apiyo to go ahead and bury her after setting aside an order obtained by her companion Moses Asum Ajwang stopping the same.

“That an injunction be and is hereby issued restraining Asum by himself, his servant or agent from interfering with the burial arrangement of the deceased by the daughter Benta Akoth,” ordered the magistrate.

  The court also ordered the burial of Achieng who died on November 7 last year while undergoing treatment at Kenyatta National Hospital to be held in Simur location in Ugenya, Siaya county where her late husband Abednego Omondi was buried.

The orders come after Asum had sought to bury the deceased, his companion of 34 years at his home in Ragen, Nyakach in Kisumu county. 

In an application by her daughter Akoth through lawyer Emmanuel Owiti, argued that her mother was not officially married to Asum as per the Luo customary marriage laws.

Akoth argued that Asum just inherited her mother after her late father Omondi died.

It is said that following the death of the deceased, the family embarked on a funeral programme with a burial planned for November 6, 2020 at her home in Ugenya sub county, Siaya County.

That is when Asum moved to court and obtained injunctive orders restraining the deceased’s burial.

 The deceased, 58 years at the time of her death is said to have met her late husband  Omondi in 1975 and began a mutual and consequential love relation that culminated into a marriage under Luo customary traditions and they were blessed with Akoth in 1977.

The husband later died and was buried in Ugenya where Achieng has a home and a house which she visited frequently, as late as early as last year and planned seasonal crops.

It is said that following the death of Omondi, she moved to Nairobi around 2005, when the deceased was retrenched at KAA and has  been living in Tassia, Embakasi on a property she bought, developed and registered singly in her name.

Achieng fell sick and was admitted at KNH where she succumbed to the illness on November 7, 2020. 

All responsibilities including nursing and processing and payment of hospital bills were “single-handedly” done by her daughter Akoth.

Earlier, Asum had alleged that she he had married the deceased under the Luo customary law and was entitled to bury her.

 But Akoth’s lawyer Owiti said that Asum did not demonstrate that his family and the deceased’s family ever met to set conditions for the alleged customary marriage with the deceased as he alleges.

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