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South African Police Management says “there is a light at end of the tunnel” with respect to the backlog in DNA testing.
In a lengthy statement on Monday, SAPS said great strides are being made to overcome the backlog, while the system to track and trace forensic exhibits is now fully up and running.
This follows the reported "disappearance" of millions of forensic exhibits at the National Forensic DNA Database due to the Property Control and Exhibit Management system being shut down by the service provider last June.
National spokesperson, Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo, said since then, SAPS has worked together with the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) and developed the Forensic Exhibit Management (FEM) System.
“This new system, which also has a track and trace functionality, replaced the previous system run by the service provider. The FEM system can now speedily locate the source and storage of the forensic evidence,” he said.
Naidoo said the FEM system went live on the 6th of April 2021 and approximately 10 million samples from the Forensic Laboratory Admin System have been loaded into the FEM system where samples can be tracked and traced at the click of a button.
“Nearly 25 000 new exhibits have also been loaded into this system,” he said.
Naidoo said the testing of specimens for DNA also reached a bottleneck which resulted in an accumulative backlog of over 170 000 samples.
He said this was a result of a shortage of Quantification Kits or so-called “DNA consumables” that are essential for DNA testing at the SAPS Forensic Science Laboratories.
