U.S. legislator welcomes Jamaica’s decision to end Cuban health programme

A Unit­ed States leg­is­la­tor, who last month had been crit­i­cal of Ja­maica over its state­ment on Cu­ba, is now sup­port­ive of the Caribbean coun­try’s po­si­tion on dis­con­tin­u­ing the cur­rent arrange­ment re­gard­ing the de­ploy­ment of Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in the pub­lic health sec­tor.

Con­gress­man Car­los Gimenez had ac­cused Ja­maica of cov­er­ing up for the Cuban dic­ta­tor­ship af­ter Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness had high­light­ed the eco­nom­ic hard­ship, en­er­gy short­ages, and grow­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an chal­lenges be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in Cu­ba in his speech at the open­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) sum­mit in St. Kitts and Nevis last week.

On Thurs­day, Kingston an­nounced that it would dis­con­tin­ue the cur­rent arrange­ment re­gard­ing the de­ploy­ment of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in the pub­lic health sec­tor by the Cu­ba gov­ern­ment.

In a me­dia re­lease, the Ja­maica gov­ern­ment said this de­ci­sion comes as both Gov­ern­ments were un­able to agree on the terms and con­di­tions of a new tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion arrange­ment, fol­low­ing the ex­pi­ra­tion of the pre­vi­ous agree­ment in Feb­ru­ary 2023.

“In the in­ter­est of con­ti­nu­ity of the valu­able ser­vice pro­vid­ed by the Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als present in the coun­try, and for their per­son­al cer­tain­ty and well-be­ing, the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica has in­di­cat­ed its will­ing­ness for the Min­istry of Health and Well­ness to en­gage these med­ical pro­fes­sion­als on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis, in keep­ing with lo­cal labour laws. This arrange­ment would last for the re­main­der of their sched­uled tenure in Ja­maica un­der the pro­gramme,” the min­istry said.

Gimenez, who is a mem­ber of the House Com­mit­tees on Armed Ser­vices and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, in wel­com­ing the Ja­maica gov­ern­ment po­si­tion, said:

“In the U.S. Con­gress, we thank the peo­ple of Ja­maica for end­ing this pa­thet­ic, crim­i­nal hu­man traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tion with the dic­ta­tor­ship in Cu­ba.

“Doc­tors were hu­man traf­ficked, their wages gar­nished and sub­ject­ed to in­hu­mane con­di­tions amount­ing to mod­ern day slav­ery,” said Gimenez, the Con­gress­man serv­ing Flori­da’s 28th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict.

Last month, the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Bar­ba­dos said the Cuban regime’s “med­ical mis­sions” pro­gramme, which has ben­e­fit­ted sev­er­al Caribbean coun­tries “re­lies on co­er­cion and abuse”.

“Cuban med­ical work­ers face with­held wages, con­fis­cat­ed pass­ports, forced fam­i­ly sep­a­ra­tion and ex­ile, re­stric­tion of move­ment through cur­fews and sur­veil­lance, in­tim­i­da­tion and threats, and even pres­sure to fal­si­fy med­ical records and fab­ri­cate pro­ce­dures. Many al­so en­dure ex­ces­sive work hours and un­safe con­di­tions,” the Em­bassy said.

Wash­ing­ton has al­so stepped up its at­tack on the Cuban health brigade pro­gramme, say­ing that the regime in Ha­vana is prof­it­ing off the forced labour of med­ical per­son­nel and that “rent­ing out Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als at ex­or­bi­tant prices and keep­ing the prof­it for regime elites is not a hu­man­i­tar­i­an gift.”

On Mon­day, the Do­mini­ca gov­ern­ment said it would en­ter in­to per­son­al con­tracts with med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from Cu­ba, as it sought to mod­i­fy its long-stand­ing arrange­ment with Ha­vana amid ef­forts by the Unit­ed States to get Caribbean coun­tries to stop their sup­port of the Cuban med­ical brigade pro­gramme.

Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit told re­porters that the main change will be that the gov­ern­ment will sign con­tracts di­rect­ly with the pro­fes­sion­als.

“That’s the main change. So, we will sign con­tracts with in­di­vid­ual doc­tors and nurs­es and so that de­ci­sion will have been tak­en as we in­ti­mat­ed some time ago,” Sker­rit said, not­ing that he had ex­pressed that po­si­tion “some time ago in my pub­lic state­ments as well”. —WASH­ING­TON (CMC)