Police say they have an additional budget to prioritise DNA processing. Several families in KwaZulu-Natal say they have been unable to bury their relatives because of backlogs at the SAPS forensic laboratory.
The Ngcobo family in Hammersdale outside Durban has been waiting for the positive identification of a burnt body that was found last year, that they believe belongs to a family member, Nomvuselelo Ngcobo.
National police spokesperson Brenda Muridili says, ” It’s over 100 000 cases with backlog. Then we received an additional R250 million which was allocated to our baseline budget to prioritise DNA processing, including the NPA priority cases. And we have also allocated dedicated overtime of R18,5 million which was allocated for the forensic laboratory for processing the DNA backlog as well as manual track and trace of exhibits.”
