By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune News Editor

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE long-awaited protocols for many affected by last year’s landmark Privy Council citizenship ruling –– which established that children born to Bahamian men are entitled to citizenship regardless of their mother’s nationality –– have been gazetted.

The protocols were tabled in the House of Assembly yesterday.

People affected by the ruling whose father is identified on their birth certificate can already apply to the Passport Office for a passport.

Those whose father is not identified on their birth certificate must take a DNA test through a process outlined in the act.

The DNA test can be done at any laboratory registered and licensed by the Hospitals and Health Facilities Licensing Board to “collect biological specimens for submission to foreign referring laboratories for the purpose of DNA testing and analysis to establish paternity”.

Likewise, any lab in the United States that is an AABB Accredited Relationship DNA Testing Facility can perform the test and report its findings to the chief passport officer.

People who go to a local designated lab must provide a passport, national insurance card, driver’s licence, voter’s card or other government-issued identification with a photograph.

They must complete a form containing information about the “biological specimen provider’s name, address, race, relationship to the person seeking to prove paternity or to the person alleged to be his father, and whether any of them has had blood transfusions or a bone marrow transplant”.

The person who collected the biological specimen must not have a relationship with any of the people whose specimens are being collected for testing and analysis, be it a spouse, a child, a family member or a friend.

The specimens must not be kept in its provider’s possession, and the name and contact information of all who witnessed the collection must be kept as a permanent record.

The lab will be required to package the specimen in a biological specimen envelope, place the envelope and pre-paid return envelopes addressed to the chief passport officer in a larger envelope and arrange for the envelope to be collected by a local courier service for transport to a foreign referring laboratory for DNA testing and analysis.

In cases where the applicant’s father has died, alternative sources of biological specimens can be a child of the man alleged to be the applicant’s father, a sibling of the man, a parent of the man or the biological children of the parents of the man alleged to be the father of the applicant.