No end in sight to huge DNA backlog

CIVIL rights group Action Society said victims of violent crime and genderbased violence (GBV) have been neglected by the DNA oversight board.

Action Society spokesperson Dr Rineé Pretorius said that with more than 300 000 cases still outstanding, it seemed there was no end to the DNA backlog crisis that had been delaying justice for the victims.

Pretorius said they had received information from a reliable source that there were on average four pieces of evidence for most cases, which meant the actual backlog could be up to 1.2 million pieces of DNA evidence.

She said the DNA Oversight Board did not seem to be making any progress with the backlog and other issues they needed to investigate and resolve as a matter of urgency. The board had only convened once since it was appointed in June last year.

Pretorius said they had requested an update from the board on the current state of affairs concerning a backlog turnaround strategy, but it did not supply any answers and referred Action Society’s request to the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL).

“We want to know why the DNA Oversight Board has not stepped in to facilitate this impasse? Why is this board not accounting to the public – what exactly is their function?” asked Pretorius.

While the police did not respond to media queries by the time of publication, Community Safety MEC Albert Fritz said crisis had been raised on a number of occasions before, and the police had been asked to engage with the province to see how they could assist in alleviating the crisis and work towards finding a sustainable solution.

Fritz said the National Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) remained a competency of the national department, and they had not heard anything from them in that regard.

“We are also discussing the formal measures involved in lodging a formal intergovernmental dispute on three issues, which include the human resource shortages, financial under-resourcing, and the backlog at the FSL,” he said.

Anti-GBV group Ilitha Labantu's spokesperson, Siyabulela Monakali, said the backlog posed a significant challenge in the fight to end the scourge of violence, and all mechanisms ought to be in place to help fight againt it and ensure there was justice for the victims and survivors.