Jensen La Vende

The al­ready slug­gish crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem now has an­oth­er hur­dle to climb af­ter the lone pathol­o­gist on du­ty downed his scalpel yes­ter­day, say­ing he will not be work­ing un­til there was an im­prove­ment in the op­er­a­tions of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC), St James.

Speak­ing with the me­dia out­side the FSC yes­ter­day, Dr Valery Alexan­drov said for the year he has al­ready per­formed 310 au­top­sies, 156 of them be­ing homi­cides and by in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards a pathol­o­gist that cross­es 350 au­top­sies a year can be stripped of his abil­i­ty to do his job through de­fi­cien­cy phase one.

Alexan­drov said he was the on­ly work­ing pathol­o­gist for six weeks as his col­league, Dr Es­lyn Mc­Don­ald-Bur­ris, was on va­ca­tion and Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes had not signed a re­new­al con­tract.

He com­plained that he was un­der­staffed based on in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards which re­quired one mor­tu­ary as­sis­tant for every 100 cas­es and so far there had been 1,200 cas­es done at the FSC for the year.

To date there are five at­ten­dants with three of them be­ing women.

"This is a tough job lift­ing dead bod­ies and what not. There is a need for a le­gal mor­tu­ary at­ten­dant to han­dle all the le­gal doc­u­ments, in­stead what we have is a ra­di­ol­o­gist and on the job trainees," Alexan­drov said.

The pathol­o­gist who has been work­ing in T&T and by ex­ten­sion the Caribbean for the last sev­en years said that the lead­er­ship of the FSC was to be blamed for the "na­tion­al cat­a­stro­phe."

He added that he has been clam­our­ing for more staff, bet­ter equip­ment and round-the-clock avail­abil­i­ty of the re­frig­er­a­tors at FSC to store bod­ies, par­tic­u­lar­ly homi­cides, to pre­serve ev­i­dence but those cries have fall­en on deaf ears.

Yes­ter­day Alexan­drov told the rel­a­tives of sev­en men mur­dered over the week­end and oth­er peo­ple who turned up for their au­top­sies that he was not per­form­ing any post mortems un­til fur­ther no­tice. Rel­a­tives, he said, were sym­pa­thet­ic to his plight and agreed with him.

Three women who spoke to the me­dia af­ter speak­ing with Alexan­drov said the pathol­o­gist was right for de­mand­ing bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions and called on au­thor­i­ties to do some­thing about it.

Oth­er rel­a­tives were over­heard say­ing that for an oil rich coun­try such con­di­tions should not be hap­pen­ing.

One man who came to sup­port a friend who lost a loved one, asked about the Mus­lim rites of a swift bur­ial, a sen­ti­ment al­so ex­pressed by Alexan­drov, a Jew.

Alexan­drov said he was not be­ing ma­li­cious to­wards the griev­ing rel­a­tives as hav­ing lost a son years ago dur­ing the US in­va­sion of Iraq he could un­der­stand their plight.

"This is not a spon­ta­neous re­volt. Even in slav­ery a good slave mas­ter knows to give his slaves the tools need­ed to do the job," Alexan­drov said, adding that he had spo­ken to two for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters but noth­ing has changed.

Alexan­drov added that he was al­so owed gra­tu­ity for con­tracts long ex­pired but have been giv­en the run-around. He added that for the 142 work­ing days of the year, there were 648 au­top­sies done at an av­er­age of five a day.

Asked about the Alexan­drov's con­cerns at a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ed­mund Dil­lon said the Gov­ern­ment was in the process of re­cruit­ing more staff at the FSC.

He ad­mit­ted that the field of foren­sic sci­ence was not an at­trac­tive one but schol­ar­ships would be pro­vid­ed and in the short-term there were plans to ex­tend ex­ist­ing con­tracts and hire new skilled labour.