‘Let us stay and work’

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Cuban medics work­ing in To­ba­go are urg­ing Gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties to give them in­de­pen­dent con­tracts to con­tin­ue work­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, even as they anx­ious­ly await word on their fu­ture with their ex­ist­ing con­tracts set to ex­pire in June.

The un­cer­tain­ty comes amid grow­ing pres­sure from the Unit­ed States on Caribbean gov­ern­ments over their use of medics from the Cuban med­ical brigade pro­gramme.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio has de­scribed the med­ical mis­sion as forced labour and threat­ened to re­voke visas of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials whose coun­tries use the pro­gramme.

On March 5, Ja­maica’s For­eign Min­istry an­nounced it would end the 50-year Cuban med­ical mis­sion. Guyana has al­so end­ed the med­ical brigade af­ter 48 years.

A 2022 re­port from the New York-based Hu­man Rights Foun­da­tion has flagged the pro­gramme as state-spon­sored hu­man traf­fick­ing. It de­scribed it as ex­ploita­tive and said it raised be­tween US$6-8 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly for the US-sanc­tioned Cu­ba.

But speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, a Cuban health­care pro­fes­sion­al in To­ba­go, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty due to a pos­si­ble back­lash, re­ject­ed those claims.

The medic, speak­ing on be­half of a small team of health pro­fes­sion­als in To­ba­go, said many Cubans now work in T&T in­de­pen­dent­ly af­ter com­plet­ing their con­tracts.

“When they fin­ish con­tract with the gov­ern­ment, they ap­ply with the TRHA (To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty). They make an in­ter­view and con­tin­ue,” the work­er said.

Asked whether the Cubans were be­ing traf­ficked or ex­ploit­ed, the med­ical pro­fes­sion­al dis­agreed.

“I don’t say it like that. I don’t think like that. The Cuban peo­ple try to go out­side and get more mon­ey. I ac­cept to go and we sign the con­tract to give Cu­ba gov­ern­ment part of the mon­ey to help ed­u­ca­tion, health. We say that is not traf­fick­ing.”

The health­care work­er said the Cuban gov­ern­ment takes 50 per cent of their salary, while the oth­er 50 per cent and al­lowances are re­tained by the doc­tors and nurs­es.

The ex­pe­ri­enced medic said they are all ner­vous, as many of their con­tracts are three months away from ex­pir­ing.

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has re­mained mum on the is­sue, while THA Health Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor did not re­spond to a call or ques­tions sent via What­sApp yes­ter­day.

The Cuban medic told Guardian Me­dia many of the mem­bers of the mis­sion are keen to stay in T&T, as the stan­dard of liv­ing here is much bet­ter than what they ex­pe­ri­ence at home.

A US fu­el block­ade on Cu­ba for the past two months has fur­ther squeezed the com­mu­nist na­tion. Two na­tion­wide black­outs in the past week have left hos­pi­tals there strug­gling to de­liv­er crit­i­cal ser­vices.

The medic told Guardian Me­dia the sit­u­a­tion back home is dire and help­ing their rel­a­tives is their main ob­jec­tive.

“All the peo­ple here try to help our fam­i­ly in Cu­ba ... The sit­u­a­tion is very hard, we have to help our peo­ple.”

The un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing their con­tracts has left the mem­bers of the mis­sion un­easy.

“We want to come back but the Trinida­di­an Gov­ern­ment don’t tell them to come back. They don’t re­new the con­tracts. They don’t say noth­ing. I want to be in­de­pen­dent.”

In­no­v­a­tive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Al­liance (IDA) leader and med­ical doc­tor Dr Denise Tsoiafatt An­gus is warn­ing that los­ing the Cuban med­ical team could hurt the lo­cal health­care sys­tem.

She la­belled the ac­cu­sa­tions by the US as “more about geopol­i­tics, specif­i­cal­ly lim­it­ing one of Cu­ba’s main sources of in­come and in­flu­ence.”

She said their con­tri­bu­tion to Caribbean health­care has been im­pact­ful for decades.

“Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es have played a crit­i­cal role, even in To­ba­go, when we lacked spe­cial­ists. They have helped to fill re­al gaps in ar­eas where we did not have enough trained per­son­nel. If Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als were to be re­moved sud­den­ly, the im­pact would be im­me­di­ate and se­ri­ous.”

She claimed Cuban spe­cial­ists were crit­i­cal for na­tion­al health­care, in­clud­ing max­illo­fa­cial surg­eries es­sen­tial for trau­ma and can­cer pa­tients.

“It is not re­al­ly an ab­stract de­ci­sion that can be made. It af­fects re­al lives, which is why per­haps the Prime Min­is­ter to date has re­mained mum on the is­sue.”

Tsoiafatt An­gus said the re­al is­sue is not health­care but sov­er­eign­ty.

“Right now, coun­tries are be­ing forced to make in­di­vid­ual de­ci­sions un­der pres­sure in­stead of act­ing like a uni­fied re­gion,” she said.

The IDA leader said she trained and prac­tised in the US and said even they heav­i­ly utilise for­eign ex­per­tise to fill work­place gaps.

“They (US) have not solved their health­care prob­lems on their own, they have had help from peo­ple across the world. So if they’re ask­ing Caribbean coun­tries to move away from Cuban med­ical sup­port, what would be our al­ter­na­tive?”