Police not collecting rape kits, says KZN Health
Police in KwaZulu-Natal
are failing to collect rape kits from health facilities.
That is what the provincial Health Department revealed to the Commission for Gender Equality, on Friday.
The commission's held hearings in Durban this week, regarding several Departments' handling of gender-based violence cases.
KZN Health's Dr Sagie Naidoo says they end up destroying specimen that have not been collected for analysis.
He says this results in perpetrators of sexual assault going free.
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"We would collect the evidence, but nobody bothers to come and collect these kits. SAPS will tell us you can go to any police station and report, you do not have to go to a police station where the raped happened.
“Yet, we do that and that is what we are faced with: kits that just accumulate and accumulate.
“I have drawn a protocol where we have to destroy kits because we have to get a register, we do not have space to keep these kits."
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