Briefing Parliament’s portfolio committee on police, South African Police Service divisional commissioner for forensic services, Lieutenant-General Khomotso Phahlane, said a target of achieving a 93% success rate in terms of processing forensic exhibits was set about two years ago.

However, the labs, situated in Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, reached a 69% success rate during the 2014/15 financial year.

“Load shedding is advanced as one of the reasons why the target will not be achieved, simply because the laboratories are very sensitive environments,” said Phahlane.

“When there is loadshedding, one of the realities here is interference with equipment which, for example, has to be repaired at times. That in itself will have an impact on production because the number of equipment you have to casework is not at the level where it's supposed to be.”

Other factors that affected the performance of the laboratories include a huge influx of cases during peak crime periods and problems with water supply to the labs.

Phahlane said the country’s forensic labs had a backlog of 3,304 cases when the financial year started on April 1 this year.

He said this constituted a 1.1% backlog – much lower than other countries with state-of-the-art labs who had an average backlog of around 13%.

“If there is an argument from any angle that forensic science laboratories have a backlog dating back six years, I am prepared to put my head on the block to say it can never be true,” said Phahlane.

ANA