Losing your mother is a trauma, but not being able to bury your dead because the hearse drivers are on strike just prolongs the agony of families.

"We just want closure. It's already hard losing our mother but now we don't even have a date for the funeral. It just prolongs the pain," Marthese Felice said.

Ms Felice said she knew there were a couple of hearses not striking but she was too concerned about using their service for fear that the others would retaliate against the strike breakers.

"The risk is too big and if something terrible happened during the funeral it would be worse. We don't know how long this will drag on," she added, questioning what would happen with the backlog of funerals.

An average of six persons die each day and at the moment there are 12 dead people at Mater Dei Hospital's mortuary, which can take up to 54 corpses.

The obituary page of The Times was empty yesterday and it seems relatives rushed to bury their dead before the strike paralysed the island - eight funerals were held on Sunday.

The Department of Health said no funerals had been planned for Monday and the Addolorata Cemetery had not been contacted for any burials today.

However, the department said the funeral of a woman who passed away at Mount Carmel Hospital was expected to be held today, though it was unaware of what arrangements the family had made.

Meanwhile, a family in Mellieħa chose to shoulder the burden of the strike and since the burial is at the local cemetery, relatives today will be carrying the coffin the short distance from the parish church.

The department was attentively watching the situation unfold and if the strike continued to hold up the burial of the dead, the government was adequately prepared for any eventuality.

The nationwide strike of all public transport led to mayhem on the streets, disrupting the lives of hundreds. Mini-vans and taxis, driving bumper to bumper at a snail's pace, clogged St Anne Street, Floriana, blocking the access of an ambulance that was rushing to reach a motorcyclist injured in a traffic accident.

As chaos reigned, a distraught woman, stuck in a traffic jam near the War Memorial in Floriana after picking up her elderly husband from Boffa Hospital, had her own concerns.

"I'm scared he is going to faint, especially in this heat," she said, as her husband, his face a ghostly pallor, sat quietly in the passenger seat, panting in the midday heat.

The driver whose taxi was blocking the woman's path was nowhere to be seen. At least some of the bus drivers who were still in the area had the heart to help when they realised that a sick person was stuck in the scorching sun.

Her hands trembling, the woman was unable to turn her car round to take an alternative route and a bus driver jumped behind the wheel to help direct the car out.

However, numerous motorists remained stuck in the middle of St Anne Street, amid mini-vans and taxis which blocked the main artery. Some drivers got out of their cars in search of a spot of shade.

"I was returning to work and now I'm stuck here," one man said, adding that he was tempted to abandon his car and walk to his home in Żejtun, but feared the vehicle would get towed.

"It's not fair that we get stuck here like this."

Tourists also got a bad impression of the island when they were stranded in Valletta and had to walk the 10-minute stretch to Portes des Bombes to wait for another coach.

Some 150 Italians, Germans, Dutch, Hungarians and French huffed and puffed after the three coaches that were supposed to take them back to their hotels were stuck in the Valletta terminus.

The media were not spared either. Net Television cameramen Joe Francalanza was punched in the face as he filmed drivers trying to smash a coach, which was picking up tourists.

Aggression also reigned against commuters, and a woman called The Times to say a mini-bus driver spat at her as she tried to navigate through the clogged traffic on the Regional Road.

Bus drivers attempted to justify their action by speaking about their fears if their sector was liberalised. They sensed that public opinion was against them, and a couple apologised for disrupting people's lives, but they felt the strike was the only way they could safeguard their livelihood.

"I've been in the business since I was 10 years old. I know no other craft and if I lose this business my family and I are ruined," one driver said.

Another driver chipped in, adding that apart from the fear of liberalisation they faced other pending issues such as the increasing cost of fuel - they spent some €85 a day on diesel - and hefty fines for minor things.

"This is a matter of life or death for us," a driver said.