DNA: 32 ‘dads’ demand cancellation of children’s passports

32 Men Petition Immigration to Cancel Children Passports After DNA Testing

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | At least 32 men have written to the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control –DCIC demanding the cancelation of children’s passports after DNA testing has shown they are not the biological fathers.

Simon Peter Mundeyi, the Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson, said the men whose details they have decided to keep confidential applied and acquired passports for their wives and children. But after conducting DNA tests and they realized the children do not belong to them, they have now gone back demanding that their details be removed from the children’s passports.

But Mundeyi has said that as DCIC they cannot cancel passports unless the complainants go to National Identification Registration Authority –NIRA and change their details. DCIC says men have been inspired to carry out DNA tests on their children by the recent stories in the media about their counterparts who have realized that not all the off springs in their homes are actually theirs.

One of the latest cases is of a man who works in Europe but when he took his six children for DNA tests, the results showed that he sired none of them. The man has been educating all the six children in international schools.

Mundeyi said that the man was prompted to take the six children for DNA analysis when he had a quarrel with his wife and she told him that some of the children were not his. Although the wife apologized that she made the statement out of anger, the man went ahead and conducted secret DNA tests at the Directorate of Government Analytical Laboratory –DGAL.

“When the results were out, he contested them, but being a person of means, we advised him to take samples to other laboratories,” Mundeyi said. “He took some samples to Canada and others to South Africa. All the samples confirmed what our DGAL had found out – none of the six children was his.”

Dozens of men have been flocking to the Ministry of Internal Affairs with hair cut off their children for DNA tests but have been advised to take the children to Government Analytical Laboratory -DGAL. Some have taken children’s nails to DGAL but have been turned back and told to take the real children for blood samples.

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