Under fire yesterday, Dr Chow said the row would help officials address long-term problems, particularly the attitude of some mortuary staff towards the dead.

'It is very important that those who work in the mortuary, who might have been handling the work with very little feeling most of the time, should have feelings for others,' Dr Chow said.

The health chief also stressed he never said all the published photographs were doctored. 'I only said the picture that showed the limbs of the body totally exposed was out of the ordinary,' he said. He added that mortuary staff and pathologists told him that what was shown in the picture was not the normal procedure for handling bodies.

Director of Health Lam Ping-yan yesterday admitted bodies were sometimes stacked on top of each other or placed on the floor when storage space was short.

But he stressed that the corpses were always individually wrapped and would therefore not 'directly come into contact with each other'.

'I understand that the matter is widely reported ... and would like to render my apology regarding the widespread discomfort caused,' Dr Lam said.

He said allegations that mortuary workers had received bribes from families wanting their relatives' bodies stored properly had been referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Dr Lam also revealed a government plan to install closed-circuit televisions in mortuaries to monitor the treatment of bodies.

An anonymous man claiming to have worked at the Victoria Public Mortuary in Kennedy Town earlier told reporters that the refrigerator in his former workplace was always full and workers sometimes had to step on bodies. 'The limbs might be broken, the faces might be deformed,' he was quoted as saying.

Funeral Association chairman Ng Yiu-tong said bodies were often held in mortuaries as crematorium facilities were seriously lacking.

'Ideally, the six crematoriums can treat 100 bodies a day, which can only just cope with the demand. But since the incinerators are sometimes broken down or require maintenance, only between 60 and 80 bodies are treated,' Mr Ng said.

He said the government had refused to increase the number of incinerators, despite numerous pleas from the association. But a Food and Environmental Hygiene Department spokeswoman said six new incinerators were being built at the Diamond Hill Crematorium.

death in hk

Bodies in need of

cremation in 2004 33,500

Number cremated 31,000

Government crematoria 6

Crematorium incinerators 32

Bodies cremated daily 60-80

Government public mortuary capacities (number of bodies stored daily in May and June):

Victoria 60 (44-78)

Kowloon 72 (108-148)

Fu Shan 168 (118-143)

Kwai Chung (opens in September) 220