Jensen La Vende 

Se­nior Re­porter 

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

Em­ploy­ees at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre are call­ing for up­grades to be done at the fa­cil­i­ty, say­ing it has be­come mag­got-in­fest­ed due to a mal­func­tion­ing re­frig­er­a­tor.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia un­der the con­di­tion of strict anonymi­ty, the em­ploy­ees shared videos of in­side the fa­cil­i­ty that showed tis­sue sam­ples lan­guish­ing on coun­ters and a leak­ing, over­packed fridge.

They al­so said a saw used for au­top­sies, which was seen in the video, was bor­rowed from the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal af­ter the fa­cil­i­ty’s own stopped work­ing two weeks ago, Work­ers said two new saws were ex­pect­ed to be brought to the fa­cil­i­ty to­day. One em­ploy­ee said as the old­er saws be­gin to mal­func­tion, they are ei­ther sent for re­fur­bish­ment or a saw is bor­rowed.

Au­top­sies were de­layed for a day two weeks ago af­ter the coun­try saw 15 mur­ders that week­end. They were on­ly per­formed af­ter a saw was bor­rowed from the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal. Work­ers said the bor­row­ing of equip­ment was the com­mon to fa­cil­i­tate the au­top­sies, with equip­ment com­ing from var­i­ous hos­pi­tals, in­clud­ing To­ba­go.

The videos showed two re­frig­er­a­tors both packed with re­mains. One was leak­ing wa­ter, with mag­gots wig­gling around. The video al­so de­pict­ed tis­sue sam­ples atop coun­ters, which the work­ers said were wait­ing to be sent for test­ing. The sam­ples ap­peared to have been there for some time. Work­ers said the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) was re­spon­si­ble for the up­keep of the re­frig­er­a­tors. 

When con­tact­ed, the chair­man of Nipdec, Nigel Ro­mano, said he was un­aware of any is­sues and ap­point­ed a se­nior man­ag­er to look in­to it be­fore com­ment­ing. 

At a me­dia con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 14, the head of the Homi­cide Bu­reau Snr Supt Sean Dhilpaul said one of the things need­ed in the fight against crime was swifter work by the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre.

Re­tired pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov was dis­ci­plined on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions af­ter speak­ing out on the con­di­tions at the cen­tre, which in­clud­ed over­packed and mal­func­tion­ing re­frig­er­a­tors. Alexan­drov re­signed in 2017. 

Last De­cem­ber, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Chi­nese Am­bas­sador Fang Qui signed a con­tract to com­mence the con­struc­tion of a $204 mil­lion fa­cil­i­ty for the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre at Farm Road, St Joseph. The project was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed with­in 18 months and will be sev­en times larg­er than the cur­rent fa­cil­i­ty.

At­tempts to con­tact Derek Sankar, di­rec­tor at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre were un­suc­cess­ful.