Police in Ghana are hunting a mortuary worker who claimed live on TV that job training involved defiling corpses by having sex with them.

Morgue attendant Sharkur Lucas said he was asked to sleep with a dead body by bosses, in order to vanquish any reservations about being near cadavers.

The young man also appeared to admit he turned to dead bodies to sate his sexual lust because women were frightened off by his morbid line of work.

Speaking on Adom TV, Lucas said he interfered with corpses "many, many times" with approval by his bosses.

"That is the training you have to do that, because once you have done that you will not be afraid of them again."

Explaining the activity on TV, Lucas said: "Sometimes if I want to ask a lady out, she will be afraid of me once she hears that I'm a mortuary man and turn me down. But when I'm in the mortuary sometimes, I will see a fresh female corpse and I will satisfy myself," Sharkur Lucas said.

"The ladies sometimes say because I work in the mortuary, I will kill them if they accept my proposal. I have not done it once but many times. Currently I don't have a wife and since I was born, I haven't had sex with a fine girl," Lucas told Adom TV.

"Working with dead bodies is a talent that God gave me. I'm with the dead bodies every time, every day and it is as if I'm with another person."

He has gone on the run since making claims and police have launched an investigation.