New DNA testing machine to arrive in Guyana next year

Dec 21, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, on Tuesday during his address at the Criminal Investigation Department’s (CID) Christmas Luncheon and Award Ceremony said that a new machine to conduct DNA testing at the Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory (GFSL)has been procured and will arrive in the country within a couple of months.

He related that once the machine is up and running, cold cases that have been awaiting DNA evidence will be speeded up. He also said that bodies that have been kept at morgues awaiting DNA samples, will finally be buried.

“We had some problems with DNA and I would like to say that we have procured for a new machine and that we will shortly, within a couple of months…We would be able to be in a position to do our own testing in Guyana at the Guyana Forensic Laboratory. We won’t have to spend time and the long wait to get DNA tests done overseas and maybe we might have a way of burial for particular cases were bodies or remains are still in waiting”, Benn said.

Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn

In August last year Kaieteur News reported that the Guyana Police Force (GPF) was forced to quickly dispose of unidentified bodies to cut storage costs.

Acquiring the new equipment will help to ease some of the financial burden on the Force too.

Benn when he made the disclosure that “a new machine” has been procured did not mention the cost, however, earlier this month some $50.5 million were approved by parliament for additional resources to support GFSL, specifically for the acquisition of a DNA analysis workflow system.

This is not the first time that a Government spent millions on DNA testing equipment.

In 2017, the then Coalition Government spent $84M from US$1M Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan to equip GFSL with DNA testing equipment.

In 2019 the equipment were officially commissioned and Former Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, had stated that the DNA machine was sourced from Italy and can run eight samples simultaneously and produce results within two hours.

Four persons were reportedly trained to operate equipment and the previous Government boasted that it will save hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure DNA results.

The Coalition had stated that it had previously cost $1M to secure DNA results, but with the machines it had procured, the cost would have been reduced to $60,000

A few years later in early 2022, according to media reports, the present Administration had to resort to spending large sums of cash and forced to wait lengthy periods for DNA results because the DNA machine purchased under the Coalition stopped producing accurate results.

During a bid in Parliament earlier this to secure cash to purchase a new machine current Home Affairs Minister, Benn said, “The machine could not run analysis for degraded samples. So….if there was fresh blood or fresh samples, you would get results with maybe 75 percent, 80 percent accuracy. That was a problem in itself because it could not run degraded blood or bone samples,”

As a result of the setback, Crime Chief Wendell Blanhum, at a Press Conference in November said that over 20 cases were affected by the lack of capacity to conduct DNA testing locally

While the Government is seeking to remedy the situation, GPF secured a laboratory from the United States (US) to assist their Investigators with DNA testing.

One of the cases presently awaiting DNA test results is the two-year-old murder of a Kuru Kururu man, Answar Stoll.

A suspect, Leon Waddle had confessed to Police that he was Stoll’s killer but he never told Detectives where he had disposed of the body.

However, a few months back in July last, Detectives discovered scattered skeletal remains in the Kuru Kururu backdam that they suspect might belong to Stoll, but to prove this is true, DNA testing is needed.

The last update police give on the matter is that the remains will be sent overseas for testing.