'Bloody work we're not trained to do'

Assistants at morgues across Gauteng claim they are being forced to conduct complex forensic duties they are not trained for, and that this is jeopardising thousands of criminal investigations.

They fear they may be unwittingly sending innocent people to jail or letting off criminals who should be behind bars.

This week a group of 180 forensic officers applied to the High Court in Pretoria for an interdict preventing the national and provincial departments of health from forcing them to dissect and eviscerate bodies.

The group say their job description is to assist forensic pathologists, but that they are regularly called on to cut open bodies as well as take toxicology and tissue samples.

Forensic officers require a Grade 12 qualification and receive on-the-job training. Their job is to recover, store and process bodies as well as document evidence, information, exhibits and property from incident scenes. They are also required to assist forensic pathologists.

"This is a crisis," said a Germiston forensic officer who is part of the court action. "It started in 2006 when we were moved from the South African Police Service to the Department of Health. Since then, our work situation has deteriorated with us given more and more responsibility without training."

The officers, who asked not to be named for fear of being fired, told the Sunday Times they had been fighting with the department for years, requesting training for the work they are told to do. "Dissecting a body without [training] could be detrimental to cases. This is tantamount to tampering with criminal cases," said a forensic officer from Pretoria.

The Germiston officer added: "We have even been asked to take fingerprints for SAPS ."

Unisa forensic expert Professor Rudolph Zinn said if the claims were true, it would pose serious concerns.

"They are not allowed to do postmortems or take samples on their own without training and the necessary skills. This will have repercussions in court as there is a chain of evidence that is followed and if any part of it is broken, such as assistants conducting work they aren't qualified to do, it will affect the admissibility of evidence.

"This may mean the suspects go free if, let's say, DNA or the postmortem is an integral part of the case. This is serious."

In December, the officers went on a go-slow to try to force the department to recognise the work they do, clarify their roles and pay "fair remuneration".

But days later, when bodies started piling up, the department obtained an interdict forcing the officers back to work.

The officers claim in their court papers that national guidelines specify that only medical officers should perform autopsies and that forensic officers should only point out bodies to pathologists.

The officers also say they are denied a "danger allowance". "We are exposed to hazardous infections from decomposed bodies [and] mutilated and infectious human remains with communicable diseases."

An officer in Pretoria said he had been asked to open the skull of a person who had died of meningitis - an infectious disease - and had to be taken to hospital for a vaccination.

The forensic officers say they are also underpaid. "Our job is trauma, blood and gore every day, yet the department refuses to pay us or train us or recognise the work we do. Just the other day I was picking up body parts of a 14-year-old girl who jumped in front of a train," said one.

Gauteng health spokesman Steve Mabona said the issue was being handled by the national department. National health spokesman Joe Maila did not respond to questions.

Professor Jeanine Vellema, chief specialist for South Gauteng mortuaries, said she sympathised with the forensic officers. "They are not medical doctors and are supposed to be assisting." There were 63 forensic pathologists in the country, 16 in Gauteng, to conduct thousands of postmortems each year. "We have a shortage ... it's not a popular profession."

sabaa@sundaytimes.co.za