The police unveiled a R75-million robotics system at a brand new forensic-science laboratory in Pretoria on Tuesday, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The police have been strongly criticised recently for the delays in forensic analysis for court cases and the police commissioner in charge of the forensic unit, Piet du Toit, said the new facilities will soon reduce this.
Du Toit said the backlog in criminal cases still awaiting DNA results is exaggerated, and is only about 500 cases. He said thousands of cases had been archived where the state prosecutor had not requested DNA analysis.
He said the laboratory prioritised cases according to court dates, and often these dates are not communicated to the lab timeously.
He said the new lab facility will have special nodal points where investigating officers and lab officials could share information more effectively and, in so doing, ensure that DNA results reached the courts on time.
The police said no other law-enforcement agency in the world has anything like the new system, as it combines the latest technology into a single system. The system can handle 800 DNA samples per day and runs 24 hours, seven days a week.
Staff may only enter the different rooms at the high-tech facility through biometric devices, which take staffers’ fingerprints before they can enter.
The cherry on the cake of the facility is the computerised DNA testing system.
Police spokesperson Arnold Greyling said the different components of the system are linked by a robot, the first in the world.
He said it is designed by engineers and scientists from Europe and South Africa, and they had hosted an FBI delegation at the facility earlier this year.
Greyling said the concept of laboratory automation is common in that liquid-handling machines are used all over the world as part of the DNA testing procedure, but in this case there is no further contact between man and machine once the evidence is submitted, right up to printing the forensic report.
He said the new robotics system will greatly increase capacity at the lab.
Currently, 50 analysts manually process between 200 to 300 samples per day. The new system can process a maximum of 800 samples daily. — Sapa