An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that the pro­gramme for Cuban health work­ers em­ployed in this coun­try’s hos­pi­tals will con­tin­ue, as he has in­struct­ed two min­is­ters to en­sure the Unit­ed States knows this coun­try has “ticked every sin­gle box” re­gard­ing pro­gramme.

He said Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als are paid their salaries di­rect­ly, set up with hous­ing and their cost of trans­porta­tion to en­ter and leave this coun­try is fund­ed by the State.

His com­ment came in the wake of US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s re­cent an­nounced of re­stric­tions on visas for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in Cu­ba and any­one else, glob­al­ly, that the US deemed to be “com­plic­it” with Cu­ba’s for­eign med­ical pro­grammes, as he raised con­cerns about hu­man traf­fick­ing re­lat­ed to the med­ical pro­gramme.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at White­hall, Port-of-Spain, Young said this is­sue did not fea­ture in the bi­lat­er­al talks with Ru­bio on Wednes­day in Ja­maica.

Young said he had cer­tain con­ver­sa­tions be­fore the bi­lat­er­al talks with Ru­bio, but he had since in­struct­ed For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to re­veal this coun­try’s po­si­tion on the Cuban health work­ers to the US ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“I am hap­py to re­port on the de­vel­op­ment of the pol­i­cy, in every­one try­ing to un­der­stand what the Unit­ed States was re­fer­ring to, re­gard­ing sev­er­al con­cerns the US would have had. Cer­tain things, if they are not done, will ful­fil what they are de­scrib­ing, for ex­am­ple, hu­man traf­fick­ing, and this coun­try has ticked every sin­gle box. So, I have asked the two min­is­ters to be proac­tive and let us send our in­for­ma­tion to the Unit­ed States be­cause we cer­tain­ly do not fall in the cat­e­go­ry of the US con­cerns,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

Young said there were 87 Cuban nurs­es and med­ical doc­tors present­ly work­ing in this coun­try.

He made it clear the mon­ey earned by the Cuban health­care pro­fes­sion­als was not go­ing back to Cu­ba, as al­leged by for­mer health min­is­ter Khan.

“That may have hap­pened un­der Dr Khan’s tenure, but it is cer­tain­ly not hap­pen­ing un­der our tenure. We help the Cuban med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers that are con­tract­ed with T&T. Just to give an ex­am­ple, set up their bank ac­counts and that is where the Gov­ern­ment pays their salaries. We al­so pro­vide pas­sage for them to come and the end of their con­tract leave. We pro­vide va­ca­tion in be­tween. The Gov­ern­ment has noth­ing to do with their pass­ports. We al­so pro­vide hous­ing, which is de­ter­mined by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.”

Fol­low­ing the US ad­min­is­tra­tion’s an­nounce­ment, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley took a stance against the pro­posed threat to pe­nalise of­fi­cials of gov­ern­ments us­ing Cuban health­care pro­fes­sion­als by re­vok­ing their visas. Re­gion­al lead­ers al­so ex­pressed con­cerns about this move and many of them said they planned to con­tin­ue the pro­gramme, not­ing the im­por­tance of the Cuban med­ical ex­per­tise to their health sec­tors.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the pri­or­i­ty should be on util­is­ing lo­cal health­care pro­fes­sion­als.