GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel regarding the massive DNA testing backlog. So says national police spokesperson, Brigadier Vish Naidoo.
In a statement released earlier this week, Naidoo says they are making great strides in overcoming the backlog, while a new system to track and trace forensic exhibits is up and running.
The previous forensic system was shut down by the service provider in June last year. This resulted in the "disappearance" of millions of forensic exhibits from the national database.
Not only were DNA exhibits inaccessible, but the system itself experienced a bottleneck of 170 000 samples, apparently due to a shortage of quantification kits.
Naidoo gives his assurance that the police had finalised a two-year contract with a service provider to resolve the issue.
"DNA samples needed for court cases, especially related to gender-based violence and identifying the deceased for burials, are being prioritised. All hands are on deck at the Saps Forensic Science Laboratories to urgently tackle the existing backlogs," he said.
However, before the kits can be bought, they are making sure that consumables used for DNA testing are valid for this process. This process is expected to take about two months.
In the meantime, enough kits have been procured to last at least three months so that testing samples in backlog, as well as new samples, can continue.
New system
Police and the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) have developed a new forensic exhibit management (FEM) system, which tracks and traces functionality and completely replaces the previous system.
"This system can now speedily locate the source and storage of the forensic evidence," Naidoo said. The new system went live on 6 April and has already loaded around 10 million samples from the forensic laboratory administration system. The system has also been loaded with nearly 25 000 new DNA exhibits.
Serial rapist
Prioritising DNA samples resulted in linking a man to an unbelievable 60 rape cases in the Benoni area last Friday, 23 April. This comes after the suspect was arrested earlier in April for rape.
Minister carefully optimistic
Western Cape Minister of Community Safety, Albert Fritz, welcomed the feedback and said that the waiting period of two months before the validation of quantification kits are concluded, is "sobering".
"We remain of the view that decentra-lising the processing of DNA exhibits and devolving the function to Saps management at a provincial level, and even to other service providers, would lead to an even more efficient and effective system," he said. "While I do commend the work of the police under the leadership of Commissioner Sithole, I want to say that we will only truly celebrate when we know that our systems are as efficient and effective as they possibly can be."
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