Forensics Science Laboratory: Highly-paid scientists idle as lab hit by delays

Punjab govt losing millions as project looks set to miss third construction deadline.

LAHORE:

Delays in the construction of the Forensic Science Laboratory are costing the provincial government millions of rupees in the form of wasted salaries, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The Punjab government paid $650,000 (Rs58.335 million) to get 32 scientists trained in the United States and put them on salaries of Rs80,000 per month. But the FSL, meant to be finished in July 2010, is still only about 70 per cent complete and the highly-paid specialists are doing essentially nothing, a Home Department official said.

There are also fears that chemicals imported for the laboratory at a cost of tens of millions of rupees will expire before the building is completed, and that some of the machinery purchased is outdated, The Express Tribune has learnt.

The aim of the FSL project is to build a state-of-the-art laboratory to support criminal investigations, manage evidence in criminal cases, and train other labs and analysts in forensic techniques.

In January 2009, the Finance Department sanctioned Rs1.49 billion for the construction of the FSL complex, the purchase of equipment and the recruitment and training of staff. The government bought 21 kanals at Multan Road near Tokhar Niaz Beg for Rs73.48 million.

The Home Department hired Dr Muhammad Ashraf Tahir as a forensic consultant at the rate of $750 (Rs63,780) per day to supervise the project. The Punjab government awarded the construction contract to Al Imam Enterprises and set a deadline of July 2010. Al Imam Enterprises is not registered with the Pakistan Engineering Council, though government rules mandate that any building contractor taking part in government contracts be registered with the council.

The Home Department recruited 36 people and sent them to the US for training in various forensic disciplines including crime scene and death investigations, forensic serology, DNA analysis, narcotics and postmortem toxicology, pathology, trace chemistry and blood spatter analysis, audio and visual analysis, forensic photography, latent fingerprinting, firearms and tool marks, and computer forensics (polygraph lie-detector tests).

An official close to the project said that the scientists were sent for training to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s Office, Cleveland, Ohio, where Dr Ashraf Tahir was working. Four of them were sent back for misconduct. The training ended in May 2010 and the remaining 32 returned so they could start work at the FSL from July 2010. The Punjab government put them on salaries of Rs80,000 each.

Al Imam missed the first construction deadline and the Punjab government gave it a three-month extension till October 2010. Once that deadline was missed too, the contractor was given a five-month extension and a token penalty of Rs10 million. Now, as the third deadline (end of March) approaches, only about 75 per cent of the civil works on the project is complete, while the Punjab government had made 65 per cent of the payment to the contractor.

Ahmed Mukhtar, chief executive officer of Al Imam, said there were multiple reasons for the delay. He said likely complications were not assessed properly at the time of the contract award, hence the initial deadline was unrealistic. “Nobody had an idea how to construct a state-of-the-art laboratory,” he said. He was optimistic that the project would be completed in two to three months.

Project director Nayyer Mehmood of the Punjab Forensic Science Agency Project Implement Unit blamed the delay on the contactor. He said the 32 forensics specialists were currently spending their time fine-tuning their standard operating procedures.

The official said that chemicals imported for the lab in 2010 were about to expire and the FSL had not even opened. He also said that six refurbished machines – model ABI 310 Genetic Analyzers – had been bought for the lab that were now obsolete. He said they were bought on the recommendation of Dr Tahir and his brother Dr Sarwar Tahir, who is also a chemical examiner and a member of the equipment procurement committee for the project.

Mehmood denied that chemicals were going to expire or that outdated machinery had been imported.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 31^st, 2011.