De­spite a video show­ing a re­frig­er­a­tor at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre leak­ing and mag­gots mov­ing around in a pud­dle, the in­sti­tu­tion re­spon­si­ble for the up­keep of the re­frig­er­a­tors says there is noth­ing wrong with the ap­pli­ance.

In an emailed re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, the Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Of­fi­cer at the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) Damien Joseph de­nied claims made by work­ers at the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre.

On Thurs­day, em­ploy­ees shared that one of two re­frig­er­a­tors was leak­ing and said there were oth­er is­sues at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Asked for a re­sponse that same day, Nipdec’s chair­man Nigel Ro­mano said he was un­aware of any is­sues but promised to look in­to it and re­vert to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions.

Yes­ter­day, Joseph said in his emailed re­sponse to the ques­tions that the mal­func­tion­ing re­frig­er­a­tor was not true.

“No, this is in­ac­cu­rate” he said. “We are un­aware of mag­gots roam­ing freely at the cen­tre. Both re­frig­er­a­tion units are ful­ly func­tion­al and the re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tems are main­tained at stan­dard op­er­at­ing tem­per­a­tures.”

Asked when the prob­lem was go­ing to be re­solved and the process for main­tain­ing the re­frig­er­a­tors, Joseph said, “There are no is­sues at present. The chillers are main­tained ac­cord­ing to the man­u­fac­tur­er’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions.”

Em­ploy­ees said aside from the re­frig­er­a­tion prob­lem, an elec­tric saw used for au­top­sies was bor­rowed from the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal af­ter the FSC’s own stopped work­ing two weeks ago.

Se­nior of­fi­cials said two new saws were ex­pect­ed to be brought to the fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, em­ploy­ees said that did not hap­pen. Em­ploy­ees said the fa­cil­i­ty has five saws that have been re­peat­ed­ly re­paired and the one cur­rent­ly in use was bor­rowed from the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal two weeks ago.

They claimed the lack of this equip­ment re­sult­ed in au­top­sies be­ing de­layed for a day af­ter the coun­try record­ed 15 mur­ders in 48 hours, two week­ends ago. But yes­ter­day, em­ploy­ees claimed se­nior of­fi­cials be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing who record­ed and leaked videos of the fa­cil­i­ty’s con­di­tions which were pub­lished by Guardian Me­dia.

One video al­so de­pict­ed tis­sue sam­ples atop coun­ters, which the work­ers said were wait­ing to be sent for test­ing.

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.

In the past, 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.