The planned Regional Referral Forensic Centre (RRFC) for the East African Community (EAC) will greatly improve the region's ability to fight crime, the officer in charge of peace and security at the EAC secretariat, Didacus Kaguta, said.

“It will contribute to reduction in crime because one of its areas is setting standards and this means that we are harmonizing our procedures of forensic services in the region,” Kaguta told a team of forensic experts from the EAC member states on 20 March, who were on a visit to Uganda.

The forensic experts were in Kampala on their last leg of a search to identify the most suitable country to host the RRFC.

Grace Akullo, the director of Uganda's Criminal Investigations Department (CID), who represented the Inspector-General of Police Lt. Gen Kale Kayihura, said the country was ready and committed to host the regional forensic centre.

With or without external funding, Akullo said, the government was ready to equip the Department of Forensics and plans were underway to upgrade it to a directorate.

“The Department of Forensics is incorporated in that of criminal investigations and there is a will to have this department grow and we are in the process of acquiring automated finger-printing machines, and have a data bank,” she said.

Kaguta said all forensic officers of the EAC' partner states would coordinate and meet regularly.

“What we are looking at now is how much governments have sunk in the existing infrastructure and what is required incase that site is selected to be the regional centre,” he said.