Police management has confirmed that they have made ‘great strides’ to overcome the backlog in DNA testing, while the system to track and trace forensic exhibits was now fully up and running, says a SABC News report.
Police spokesperson Vish Naidoo said this followed 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 in June 2020. Naidoo said those exhibits were in fact stored in the Forensic Service Laboratory administration system and could only be accessed manually.
“Since then, the police have worked together with the State Information Technology Agency and developed the Forensic Exhibit Management system. This new system, which also has a track and trace functionality, replaced the previous system run by the service provider,” said Naidoo.
He said the system could now speedily locate the source and storage of the forensic evidence. It went live on 6 April and about 10m samples from the Forensic Laboratory administration system have been loaded into it. He said nearly 25,000 new exhibits have also been loaded into the system.