GCIS
Police Minister Bheki Cele says the DNA backlog is expected to be erased by January next year.
Cele was speaking at the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide on Monday he said the backlog, which stood at 241 000 in April has now been reduced to 71 000.
He said the DNA backlog is mostly due to contractual issues.
"One of the major things was the nonprofessional management of contracts, 16 contracts were allowed to lapse. Other problems were bulked samples that were absent in the stations, all these stations now have these bulk samples supplied by the main stations around their cluster."
Cele also revealed that more than 9000 people have been linked to crime scenes but haven't been found.
"We have also got 9234 DNA's linking people to crime scenes, people that we have not found but we know that we have their DNA in our bank which will be easy to link those people the day we find the people that we are hunting."
"Our laborites have managed to find 15 568 persons to crime which means that through the DNA 15 000 people are linked to crime which makes life easier to resolve that crime," the Minister said.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance said Minister Cele was constantly shifting the goalposts when it comes to the deadline for the eradication of the DNA testing backlog.
MP, Andrew Whitfield, said Cele cannot seem to decide which deadline he wants to stick to.
"Originally, the Minister told us in Parliament that the DNA backlog would be eradicated by the end of September. In Parliament just a week ago, the Minister indicated that the DNA backlog would be dealt with by the end of November," he said.
"This is a Minister who does not understand his own Department and wants to constantly shift the goalposts, thinking that the South African public is not watching and taking note."
Whitfield said that Cele was not fit for the role of Police Minister, saying the DNA backlog had escalated under his watch over the last four years and were it not for the constant pressure of MPs, we would not be as close as we are now to eradicating the backlog.
(Additional reporting: AFM News)
