An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Griev­ing rel­a­tives of de­ceased peo­ple yes­ter­day knocked the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre (FSC) in St James for the run-around they con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence, ask­ing why au­top­sies are not be­ing done in a time­ly man­ner.

Frus­trat­ed and up­set as they re­turned for a sec­ond day yes­ter­day to iden­ti­fy their rel­a­tive who was killed last Thurs­day, one woman who asked not to be named, urged FSC of­fi­cials to pro­vide an ex­pla­na­tion.

She said her rel­a­tive’s body was dis­cov­ered around 6 am on Sep­tem­ber 26 at his home in La Canoa, and while it was brought to the FSC fol­low­ing the re­moval from the crime scene, they were turned away last Fri­day and told to re­turn yes­ter­day.

She said, “They called this morn­ing to say to come down as they were leav­ing Arou­ca, so I called his moth­er and we said we would come one time. When we reach down here, is to hear they done car­ry back the body.

“We come down Fri­day be­cause they told us to come that day. No­body said to come one time Thurs­day and we were told they send back the body then. We were told there would have been noth­ing do­ing on Mon­day, and they call and tell us come to­day (yes­ter­day) and we here.”

Up­set as she will now have to ap­ply for ad­di­tion­al time away from work and would not be paid as a re­sult, the an­gry woman said, “No­body com­ing out to ex­plain to the peo­ple what re­al­ly go­ing on.”

Rel­a­tives of a man killed over the week­end said they too had been un­able to move ahead.

“We were say­ing at least the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion could have been done to­day (yes­ter­day), but they said noth­ing is go­ing to be done and every­thing will be done to­mor­row (to­day).”

One man said, “Since last week, I have been com­ing out with fam­i­lies and every time they are send­ing them back, for what­ev­er rea­son, I don’t know.

“They over­do­ing it and the sit­u­a­tion is just over­bear­ing right now. They need to get their au­top­sies done. Some­body has to do it.”

When Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed act­ing FSC di­rec­tor Der­rick Sankar at 10.25 am about the sit­u­a­tion, he con­firmed one of the pathol­o­gists had vis­it­ed To­ba­go on Mon­day where he along with a team of mor­tu­ary at­ten­dants, had per­formed sev­en au­top­sies.

Asked why there ap­peared to be a de­lay in au­top­sies be­ing done at the FSC, Sankar said the doc­tors worked on dif­fer­ent weeks.

He de­fend­ed his staff as he in­sist­ed, “They get­ting ready to do post-mortems.”

Told that sev­er­al bod­ies had al­ready been sent back with the re­spec­tive fu­ner­al homes ear­li­er in the morn­ing, he ar­gued, “They does have to take all the in­for­ma­tion first.”

Asked why the two pathol­o­gists were op­er­at­ing on a one week in, one week out sys­tem, Sankar ex­plained, “Be­cause they have all the work that they have to do in one week, which is about 15 or 20 post mortems, they have re­ports to write up too and de­liv­er to the DPP, to the po­lice. They have oth­er, Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion ... they have a lot of re­ports to write too, so they spend the time do­ing their re­ports and the oth­er pathol­o­gist will take the en­tire week. It doesn’t make sense do­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous post-mortems and they have a lot of work to write up.”

Sankar said post-mortems did not stop with an au­top­sy be­ing per­formed, as that was on­ly part of the process.

In ad­di­tion, he added, “They have a lot of re­quests for ur­gent cas­es too.”

Claim­ing, “We found that to be the most ef­fi­cient way,” Sankar added, “The oth­er pathol­o­gist will jump in where nec­es­sary but he has a lot of work to do from last week, to write up re­ports.”

In his five-hour-long bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert spoke of the gov­ern­ment’s in­ten­tion to up­grade the phys­i­cal as­sets of the FSC in the com­ing fis­cal year.

A land­mark agree­ment be­tween the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Min­istry of Com­merce of the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na in 2024, paved the way for the con­struc­tion of a state-of-the-art FSC.

This fa­cil­i­ty, Im­bert as­sured, would el­e­vate the stan­dards of foren­sic and pathol­o­gy ser­vices in T&T, en­sur­ing mod­ern stor­age so­lu­tions and ameni­ties that sup­port law en­force­ment op­er­a­tions.