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A report by the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) has revealed that the Forensic Chemistry Laboratories (FCL), responsible for processing scientific evidence in support of drunken driving prosecutions, food analysis as well as establishing cause of death, are in a total state of disarray. Taking into account that crime detection is crippled when Forensic Science Labs are not functioning at optimal levels, this is a most serious state of affairs, since we already know, following a reply to a DA parliamentary question, that 24,375 samples were already backlogged in the system as of August 2009 (up 300% in the space of two years - from 6,068 in July 2007).

The Auditor General has confirmed that long sample processing delays are resulting in "cases [having] been withdrawn from court". It also revealed that many samples are simply remaining unprocessed because government cannot hire sufficient staff, nor house labs in suitable buildings. Staff cannot cope with the overwhelming number of samples and cannot properly perform their duties because of unfit and potentially dangerous buildings, all resulting in spiralling sample backlogs. We have highlighted these problems repeatedly in the past, and it is astonishing to consider that about R50-million could be frittered away on a police party in Bloemfontein while such serious issues are not being addressed.

Further damning discoveries by the AGSA include:

As at the end of August last year, routine blood-alcohol analysis took 120 days to process at the Pretoria lab;
There is a 6 year backlog for routine toxicology cases at the FCL in Johannesburg;
Neither the Pretoria nor the Johannesburg labs conform to the Occupational Health and Safety Act;
A staggering 27% of all SAPS samples from KwaZulu-Natal, that were received by the labs, were rejected as the samples had not been correctly collected or stored or the seals had been tampered with;
The AG found certain police stations to be major culprits, such as Seshego in Limpopo, which had a 42% rejection rate on all the chemistry samples that it sent in to the Pretoria lab for analysing; and
At the lab in Johannesburg there is no separate storage area for biological waste, and bins were left outside in the passage for collection, posing a health risk to personnel.

The Democratic Alliance has repeatedly raised the issue of backlogged forensic samples, and the urgent steps that need to be taken to get rid of this bottleneck that cripples our criminal justice system. Backlogs in our laboratories place severe strain on police investigations and delay court cases, and thus constitute one of the most serious impediments to a properly functioning justice system. But all of these problems are well documented. It is now time that action is taken.

The Minister of Health, Mr Motsoaledi, has undertaken to give due attention to the findings of the AGSA report on chemical laboratory issues in particular, but the broader problem within our forensic science laboratories has remained chronically unchecked by the ministry of police.