Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant 

Days af­ter T&T stu­dents from Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica were repa­tri­at­ed, T&T med­ical stu­dents who are cur­rent­ly in Cu­ba are al­so seek­ing repa­tri­a­tion as they say life has be­come “un­bear­ably tough” for them.

The stu­dents say they have run out of per­son­al hy­giene prod­ucts such as soap, tooth­paste and san­i­tary nap­kins.

Guardian Me­dia has been in­formed that there are 21 stu­dents, 19 of whom are on schol­ar­ship in Cu­ba.

For fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion, one of the stu­dents spoke un­der strict anonymi­ty ex­plain­ing how ter­ri­ble the liv­ing con­di­tions have be­come in Cu­ba adding that it’s their main rea­son for push­ing to be repa­tri­at­ed un­til mid-Au­gust where they are card­ed to be­gin prepa­ra­tion for the next se­mes­ter of their re­spec­tive med­ical stud­ies.

Of the batch of stu­dents, 99 per cent are study­ing to be­come med­ical doc­tors while one oth­er stu­dent in pur­su­ing oth­er stud­ies along the same med­ical field.

The stu­dent ex­plained that when class­es were sus­pend­ed in March and the plan was sug­gest­ed that we do “dis­tance learn­ing” it was al­ready af­ter T&T’s bor­ders were closed.

“Quite frankly it wasn’t un­til April that they even said we would be do­ing dis­tance learn­ing. We were ba­si­cal­ly in the air for a month. Any re­quest as to any pos­si­bil­i­ty of us be­ing repa­tri­at­ed have gone unan­swered to date,” the stu­dent said.

The first col­lec­tive let­ter dat­ed April 2 was sent to the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Stu­art Young, ask­ing for repa­tri­a­tion.

The stu­dent said the Em­bassy of Cu­ba on April 16 asked for peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in re­turn­ing home if the pos­si­bil­i­ty arose and they re­spond­ed to that.

The stu­dent added that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion then again asked for per­sons to ex­press in­ter­est in re­turn­ing home on April 21 and the re­spons­es were com­piled and sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

On April 26, Young re­spond­ed say­ing “Bor­ders closed, stay safe”, the stu­dent said.

On May 1 a plane land­ed in Trinidad car­ry­ing 11 Cuban nurs­es and news of this fur­ther sad­dened the stu­dent as she fur­ther ex­plained, “I cried for days. I nev­er felt so heart­bro­ken in my life. By the time the end of April hit the re­al­i­ty of the short­ages reached an unimag­in­able lev­el it went from want­i­ng to go home to need­ing to.”

More stu­dents, Guardian Me­dia was told, start­ed writ­ing to the Em­bassy ask­ing for as­sis­tance and to date, they are yet to be re­spond­ed too.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the fa­ther of one of the stu­dents, who begged the T&T Gov­ern­ment to “bring them back home as soon as pos­si­ble.” 

“Let them know when they are reach­ing home, give them a date. They have to reach back in Cu­ba for mid-Au­gust so they need to come home now be­cause they would have to be in two weeks quar­an­tine and if you do the math now and dis­cov­er that if a plane goes for them next week af­ter the two weeks quar­an­tine they will ba­si­cal­ly have three weeks with their fam­i­lies.”

In cor­re­spon­dence to the stu­dents on June 8, Young ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the stu­dents’ email and let­ter.

He, how­ev­er, not­ed that his min­istry will re­new a re­quest to the Min­istry of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs to “com­mu­ni­cate with the Cuban Gov­ern­ment to as­sist you all in what­ev­er way that they can.”

Young al­so re­mind­ed the stu­dents that the bor­ders of T&T are cur­rent­ly closed to both na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als.