CRIME Chief, Assistant Commissioner of Police Paul Williams said Guyana could soon gain DNA testing support from INTERPOL.

He said last month during his attendance at an INTERPOL Conference in Argentina, he decided to express Guyana’s interest to gain the much-needed support.
“We still need to embark upon overseas assistance out of Brazil, the U.S. and so on,” the crime chief said.

He added: “We will embark on that avenue now through INTERPOL to see what assistance we can have as it relates to DNA and how fast that can be done to help us solve some matters. Indeed when I went to the CID, I learnt that there are still some matters that are pending, waiting DNA results.”

In February, Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory (GFSL) Director Delon France had said the agency will be fully capable of conducting DNA testing by year-end, thereby reducing the expensive costs to send samples overseas for analysis.

He had noted that a modern piece of DNA testing equipment is being procured and members of staff have already begun training to use it.

The equipment will have the capacity to conduct test on eight samples at a time.
It costs Guyana an estimated $1.75M to have just one DNA sample transported and tested overseas.

Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan had said that the lab benefited from almost US$1M in upgrades, which will enable it to conduct DNA testing.