DNA backlog set to be erased by January - Cele

The backlog, which stood at 241 000 in April, has now been reduced to 71 000.

Cele was speaking at the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide on Monday.

He said the DNA backlog is mostly due to contractual issues.

"One of the major things was the nonprofessional management of contracts, 16 contracts were allowed to lapse. 

"All those contracts in place and all those contracts are monitored on month-to-month basis to such an extent that when the six months lapsed for the expiry of the contract, then you being to work on its renewal so that we never go back to the situation where these contracts will collapse."

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"Other problems were bulked samples that were absent in the stations, all these stations now have these bulk samples supplied by the main stations around their cluster." 

Cele also revealed that more than 9000 people have been linked to crime scenes but haven't been found. 

"We have also got 9234 DNA's linking people to crime scenes, people that we have not found but we know that we have their DNA in our bank, which will be easy to link those people the day we find the people that we are hunting. 

"Our laborites have managed to find 15 568 persons to crime, which means that through the DNA 15 000 people are linked to crime which makes life easier to resolve that crime."