T&T to send aid to Cuba independently

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

Trinidad and To­ba­go will pro­vide hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to Cu­ba but will do so in­de­pen­dent­ly rather than as part of Cari­com’s co­or­di­nat­ed re­lief ef­fort.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers told Guardian Me­dia that when this coun­try sent re­lief items to Ja­maica in the af­ter­math of the de­struc­tive Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, it al­so formed a re­la­tion­ship with rep­utable non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions in Cu­ba.

Sobers said T&T will there­fore deal di­rect­ly with those NGOs.

“We li­aised with some or­gan­i­sa­tions in Cu­ba that are well known to dis­trib­ute items to im­pov­er­ished per­sons and peo­ple in need in Cu­ba and what­not. And as the or­gan­i­sa­tion that we would have li­aised with dur­ing that time, we’ve con­tin­ued to have a good re­la­tion­ship with those or­gan­i­sa­tions. And then mov­ing for­ward with re­spect to the re­lief or send­ing any type of re­lief items to the Cuban peo­ple. Now, we will li­aise with those or­gan­i­sa­tions,” Sobers said.

On March 24, Cari­com is­sued a state­ment say­ing that the re­gion­al bloc is co­or­di­nat­ing re­lief items for Cu­ba, which is in the midst of a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis brought on by the Unit­ed States-en­forced block­ade.

The Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at is co­or­di­nat­ing the pro­cure­ment and ship­ment of es­sen­tial sup­plies, in­clud­ing food, med­ical items and so­lar equip­ment, to Cu­ba on be­half of mem­ber states.

Mex­i­co is sup­port­ing the ef­fort by sourc­ing the sup­plies and pro­vid­ing free trans­port from its ports to Cu­ba.

Sobers told Guardian Me­dia:

“We’re not knock­ing Cari­com for do­ing their own thing, their busi­ness. But we’re just say­ing that we have a sys­tem that has been test­ed al­ready. Lo­gis­ti­cal­ly, it has worked, and we will just con­tin­ue with that.”

The For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter said last week T&T reached out to those or­gan­i­sa­tions to as­cer­tain what re­lief items they will need.

“And once we get back that re­quest, we will then start to put things in place like we did be­fore.”

Asked if there are con­cerns that any re­lief items for the Cuban peo­ple will be af­fect­ed by the block­ade, Sobers said:

“They have an arrange­ment that al­lows them to ac­cept items and dis­trib­ute them ac­cord­ing­ly. I sus­pect they have a good re­la­tion­ship with the U.S. and that they are seen to be a bona fide or­gan­i­sa­tion where what­ev­er re­lief is sent to them would in fact be giv­en to the Cuban peo­ple.”

Sobers said this was not com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Cari­com be­cause the re­gion­al body did not ask for this coun­try’s po­si­tion on the mat­ter.

The U.S. block­ade on Cu­ba, first for­malised by Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy in 1962, has re­cent­ly been in­ten­si­fied by a Jan­u­ary 2026 ex­ec­u­tive or­der from Pres­i­dent Trump tar­get­ing oil sup­pli­ers with steep tar­iffs.

These mea­sures have caused a to­tal col­lapse of the is­land’s pow­er grid, crit­i­cal fu­el short­ages that have sus­pend­ed over 96,000 surg­eries, and se­vere dis­rup­tions to food and wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion.