Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

As the Cuban Med­ical Brigade stalls in oth­er parts of the Caribbean, close to 60 Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are con­tin­u­ing to work in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This was con­firmed by Cuban am­bas­sador to T&T, Gus­ta­vo Daniel Veliz Oli­vares, yes­ter­day. Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has not re­spond­ed to ques­tions on the mat­ter in re­cent months.

In ear­ly March, re­ports in­di­cat­ed that Ja­maica had dis­con­tin­ued its med­ical co­op­er­a­tion pro­gramme with Cu­ba, end­ing a five-decade re­la­tion­ship un­der which health­care work­ers from the Caribbean na­tion filled key gaps in the pub­lic health sys­tem. That same month, Cuban of­fi­cials were al­so re­port­ed­ly prepar­ing to with­draw the coun­try’s med­ical brigade from Guyana. This month, how­ev­er, it was re­port­ed that more than 40 Cuban doc­tors re­main in Ja­maica un­der new con­tracts.

Oli­vares con­firmed that 59 Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are cur­rent­ly work­ing in the coun­try. He said: “We start­ed that pro­gramme in 2003. Since that mo­ment up to now, we have had 754 peo­ple dur­ing all those years. To­day, we have 59. What is go­ing to hap­pen af­ter 2027? I don’t know. We are open, mean­ing it’s a le­gal agree­ment, sign­ing be­tween the Gov­ern­ment of Cu­ba and Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. What is go­ing to hap­pen in the fu­ture? I don’t know. We have a will­ing­ness.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Bo­doe yes­ter­day, ask­ing whether the pro­gramme is be­ing wound down and whether there are plans to re­new the con­tract when it ex­pires next year. There was no re­sponse up to press time.

The Cuban Med­ical Pro­gramme sees Cu­ba de­ploy tens of thou­sands of health­care work­ers abroad to pro­vide med­ical ser­vices, es­tab­lish clin­ics and train lo­cal stu­dents. The Unit­ed States has de­scribed the pro­gramme as forced labour and mod­ern-day hu­man traf­fick­ing, cit­ing re­ports that the Cuban state re­tains most of doc­tors’ salaries and re­stricts their move­ment.

Oli­vares re­ject­ed those claims, call­ing them false.

“This is a false ac­cu­sa­tion. They don’t have a rea­son to say that. They [Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als] go to co­op­er­ate with what­ev­er coun­try, not un­der oblig­a­tion. In Cu­ba, they keep their em­ploy­ment in Cu­ba. In Cu­ba, they re­ceive the salary - mean­ing that they are go­ing vol­un­tary to Trinidad and To­ba­go, to Qatar, to wher­ev­er. That’s why I say that this is a false al­le­ga­tion.”

Oli­vares said even if the Cuban Med­ical Pro­gramme does not con­tin­ue in T&T, both coun­tries could still co­op­er­ate in oth­er ar­eas, in­clud­ing the restora­tion of his­tor­i­cal build­ings and the place­ment of Cuban nurs­es in lo­cal pri­vate nurs­ing homes.

De­spite dif­fer­ing diplo­mat­ic po­si­tions, Oli­vares said he main­tains “nor­mal and good com­mu­ni­ca­tion” with For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers.

His com­ments came af­ter T&T and Guyana re­served their po­si­tions on a joint Cari­com state­ment on Wednes­day. Cari­com and the Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (COF­COR) had ex­pressed con­cern over re­cent state­ments sug­gest­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of mil­i­tary ag­gres­sion against Cu­ba.

Oli­vares de­clined to com­ment on T&T’s de­ci­sion not to join oth­er Cari­com mem­bers in con­demn­ing the US block­ade.