Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing mount­ing ques­tions and grow­ing scruti­ny af­ter fail­ing to re­spond to re­peat­ed re­quests for clar­i­ty on the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment in the Cuban med­ical mis­sion pro­gramme, even as re­gion­al coun­ter­parts be­gin step­ping away from sim­i­lar arrange­ments.

De­spite mul­ti­ple at­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to ob­tain com­ment, nei­ther Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar nor Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has pro­vid­ed any re­sponse on the mat­ter.

This si­lence comes at a crit­i­cal time. The Unit­ed States has in­ten­si­fied its crit­i­cism of Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions, brand­ing as­pects of the pro­gramme as state-spon­sored hu­man traf­fick­ing and warn­ing of po­ten­tial con­se­quences for par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries.

Re­ports last year in­di­cat­ed that Caribbean lead­ers were sum­moned to high-lev­el dis­cus­sions with US of­fi­cials amid threats of visa re­stric­tions, tar­get­ing in­di­vid­u­als linked to the pro­gramme. Against that back­drop, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion re­mains un­clear.

Guardian Me­dia for­mal­ly sub­mit­ted a se­ries of ques­tions to both the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­istry of Health. The lat­est ques­tions were sent yes­ter­day, which sought to de­ter­mine whether a pol­i­cy de­ci­sion has been made and what con­sid­er­a­tions are guid­ing that process.

For over six decades, the Cuban Med­ical Co­op­er­a­tion Pro­gramme has been a cor­ner­stone of health­care de­liv­ery across the re­gion.

The ini­tia­tive in­volves the de­ploy­ment of Cuban health­care pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing spe­cialised doc­tors, nurs­es and med­ical tech­ni­cians, to for­eign na­tions.

These mis­sions are typ­i­cal­ly es­tab­lished through bi­lat­er­al gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment agree­ments.

Among the ques­tions posed – Has Cab­i­net made a de­ci­sion on the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Cuban med­ical mis­sion pro­gramme?

If no de­ci­sion has been made yet, what fac­tors are cur­rent­ly be­ing weighed?

Is the Gov­ern­ment lean­ing to­ward con­tin­u­a­tion, re­form or ter­mi­na­tion of the pro­gramme?

Has Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceived any di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion or warn­ing from US au­thor­i­ties on this is­sue?

Do you have an ac­cu­rate fig­ure for how many Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are cur­rent­ly work­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go?

Up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion, those ques­tions re­main unan­swered.

As the lack of trans­paren­cy on the mat­ter cir­cu­lates, coun­tries in the re­gion have been tak­ing de­ci­sive steps.

Both Ja­maica and Guyana have an­nounced moves to un­wind their long­stand­ing med­ical co­op­er­a­tion agree­ments with Cu­ba, sig­nalling a shift that could re­shape health­care staffing across the Caribbean. Those de­ci­sions are wide­ly seen as a re­sponse to mount­ing geopo­lit­i­cal pres­sure, par­tic­u­lar­ly from Wash­ing­ton, as well as on­go­ing con­cerns about the em­ploy­ment arrange­ments gov­ern­ing Cuban med­ical per­son­nel abroad.

The un­cer­tain­ty is al­ready hav­ing an im­pact here as Cuban health­care work­ers sta­tioned in To­ba­go have re­port­ed­ly ex­pressed anx­i­ety over their fu­ture, un­cer­tain whether they will be al­lowed to con­tin­ue work­ing, be sent home or face abrupt changes to their em­ploy­ment arrange­ments.

Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith Breb­nor in­di­cat­ed that she was un­aware about the fu­ture of Cuban medics in To­ba­go.

Breb­nor said cen­tral gov­ern­ment is the sole au­thor­i­ty to en­gage the Cuban mis­sion, and she was not privy to any de­ci­sion on the mat­ter.