Thank you, and through you, Mr Speaker, Minister, when we look at what the laboratories have gone through - a situation that had many of us on the portfolio committee tearing our hair out - those backlogs were enormous and it has taken the work of someone of the calibre of Brigadier Shezi - who travelled with us on the study tour - to look at the DNA database legislation, to pull this down.
What I would like to know is: How on earth did it come about that people were hired who patently ran the place into the ground? Who was responsible for hiring them? Was nepotism at all a factor? Has it been weeded out, if it was?
During my visits there I wrote my name in the dust on boxes of multimillion- rand machinery. Those boxes were still there over a year later when I went back, still with my signature on them. I would like to know if that type of mismanagement has now been weeded out and whether those who ordered and then abandoned that multimillion-rand machinery have been brought to book and been held responsible for that major mismanagement and expenditure. Thank you.