Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Victims’ kin fail to submit samples
AFTER a week of DNA collection, only 70 sam-ples were collected from the closest kin of the victims of the mv Princess of the Stars tragedy.
This was far from the projected 250 to 300 DNA samples to be collected per day.
“This is a typical Filipino attitude,” said Supt. Anthony Obenza, chief of the Philippine Center on Transnational Crime-Visayas Field Office.
With the deadline set this Friday, Obenza and other officials from the action center are expecting the majority to flock to the center at the last minute.
But Obenza said other families who failed to have their DNA samples taken might also be a sign that they still believe their missing kin are still alive.
Though only few families are visiting the action center, the deadline of DNA collection would still be this Friday.
Obenza added that antemortem and postmortem data collected over the week are now ready for shipment to the International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) headquarters in Sarajevo, Bosnia.
Obenza admitted that there were slight packing problems with the postmortem data collected from the bones of the dead bodies, but these were addressed.
Transport
Obenza said that the DNA samples would be sent to the nearest Philippine Embassy, to Sarajevo, Bosnia and then transported by land to the ICMP headquarters.
“The nearest embassy is in Budapest. Interpol will pick up the packages at the Philippine Embassy and then bring them to Bosnia,” he said.
Obenza also revealed yesterday that they would be cutting the DNA collection team by half starting today.
Over the weekend, two female fingerprint specialists arrived in Cebu and brought with them an Automated Fingerprint Identification System for the cross matching.
With the latest developments in the disaster victim identification, Obenza said President Arroyo will be in Cebu on July 23 to visit the Information Management Center.
“We have to show that we have moved from sampling to matching,” said Obenza. (EPB)
