On August 18, the Director General (DG) of Health Services at the Ministry of Health, wrote to the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Internal Affairs, of the Parliament of the Republic of Uganda and expressed a number of reservations on some of the aspects of the Bill.
To the DG, the title of the Bill needed to be revised to better reflect its scope, purpose and intent. The current title of the Bill, as it is, is extremely broad and does not synch with what it intends to achieve.
It was the recommendation of the Ministry of Health the Bill redefines what an analytical laboratory is and without this, the Bill risks creating confusion by attempting to regulate the scientific analysis of all samples. The Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions could not agree more as it independently raised this same issue.
The DG told the Committee that the issue of management of poisons falls under the Ministry of Health which already has systemic, institutional and structural capabilities in place for managing patients who are poisoned.
Putting the management of poisons under the Directorate of Government Analytical Laboratory would have the effect of duplication of services within the same government. And moreover this was a position agreed upon during the consultative process.
How and why a different position resurfaced in the Bill needs to be explained by the drafters of the Bill.
The opinion of the ODPP was that other suitable professional bodies like the Ministry of Health and other affiliated bodies are best suited to make comments on the subject matter of the Poison Control Centre. To the Ministry of Health poison management should be excluded from the Bill, as this function appropriately falls under its mandate.
The DG recommended that a dedicated committee of experts be drawn from the relevant stakeholders involved in the forensic field and constituted to provide oversight and regulation of forensic practice in the country. This is necessary considering the wide scope of forensic practice and the critical role of the multiple stakeholders.
Another stakeholder was of the opinion that Uganda’s most urgent need is of an independent body, by law established, to regulate and oversee the forensic services offered by the key stakeholders. Such a body will provide regulatory oversight to the forensic services offered by the Uganda Police, the Ministry of Health and the Government Analytical Laboratory.
There is a further suggestion that Uganda should establish a body known as The Independent Forensic and Scientific Services Commission with representation from, among others, the Judiciary and ODPP, the law enforcement agencies, Ministry of Health, professional associations and the Human Rights Commission.
Such a commission would provide for checks and balances of the services provided and prevent the concentration of regulatory power within a single Ministry.
In addition such a body would provide independent oversight for DNA databases as well as align the country with global trends in forensic governance. An independent body with input from the relevant stakeholders enhances impartiality, promotes human rights and builds public confidence.
In the United Kingdom the Forensic Service Regulator operates independently and reports to Parliament. It provides codes of conduct for forensic services but does not sit within a single Ministry. In South Africa, the National Forensic Oversight and Ethics Board, established under the Criminal Law (Forensic Procedures) Amendment Act, 2013, includes representation from police, forensic scientists’ civil society and lawyers.
The Ministry of Health further recommended that a benchmarking visit to selected countries within the region should be considered to study how their Analytical Laboratories operate and collaborate with other forensic service providers. It was most unfortunate that this Bill was drafted without benchmarking.
It will also be prudent to review the legal framework establishing Government Analytical Laboratories in these countries and other relevant laws regulating forensic practice. Uganda’s Forensic and Scientific Services Bill, 2025 may be the only one of its kind and risks entering unchartered waters considering the comments about the Bill by the various stakeholders.
On February 13, 2025, the Forensic Evidence Bill, 2024 was withdrawn on the floor of Parliament and the reason given for withdrawing the Bill was that after extensive consultations it had become obvious that some aspects of the bill needed to be reviewed and refined. The Forensic and Scientific Analytical Services Bill, 2025 has the same defects as previous Bill and must, therefore, be painfully withdrawn.
The defects in the Forensic Bill 2025 are the misdeeds and mischief’s of the team that was to review and refine the previous Bill. The team simply repackaged the old bill without incorporating the changes that the stakeholders had recommended. This was probably because of conflict of interest and other ulterior motives.
It would be prudent that the Ministry of Internal Affairs engages the Law Reform Commission (ULRC) to take the lead in drafting a law to regulate forensic practice and the Commission will, in turn, consult and hire relevant experts to draft this law. The ULRC is a constitutional body established under Article 248 (1) of the constitution of Uganda and the mandate of the Commission is to study and keep under constant review the laws of Uganda.
The ODPP raised a fundamental issue; that a law that is enacted should address a specific mischief meriting regulation by statute. Neither the memorandum of this Bill nor the text of the Bill itself has clearly spelt out the mischief this law is intended to cure. That there are challenges in regulation and provision of forensic services in Uganda is not in question.
The question is what type of law we need to cure these defects. A law may be regulatory or administrative. The framers of the Forensic Bill 2025 should have interrogated the needs of the country in as far as forensic services are concerned before coming up with this Bill, which Bill is both regulatory and administrative.
The major issues in forensic service delivery in Uganda today include credibility of results of forensic examinations and tests, capacity building, logistical challenges and coordination of the services. Forensic and Scientific Analytical Services Bill 2025 has not and will not address these endemic challenges. The root causes of these poor services needed to be have interrogated even before such a bill was drafted.
Many of these issues may be addressed through administrative measures including internal and external quality control and establishment of a regulatory body.
The Forensic and Scientific Analytical Services Bill 2025 is basically about the services provided by the Government Analytical Laboratory, to the exclusion of the services offered by other stakeholders. A question that begs to be answered is what value this law will add to the quality of services that the DGAL will provide.
Forensic services are crucial in justice delivery and these services are provided by, among others, the Uganda Police Force, the Ministry of Health and the Government Analytical Laboratory. These sectors technically play distinct roles.
No single administrative law can harmonise the roles and responsibilities of these key stakeholders. It is only a regulatory law that will bind these service providers and without such a law things will continue to fall apart.