Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, has thrown sup­port be­hind Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley for his re­cent po­si­tion on US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Cuban doc­tors’ pol­i­cy.

“These coun­tries have es­tab­lished sol­id re­la­tion­ships with Cu­ba, these small coun­tries in the Caribbean here use Cuban doc­tors and nurs­es be­cause it helps them a lot to get the spe­cial­ists they need. It would be hard for them to get them oth­er­wise and I find it dif­fi­cult, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, to be­gin to tell these coun­tries that they can’t use these doc­tors,” Gon­za­les said yes­ter­day.”

While speak­ing at the cer­e­mo­ny for the prac­ti­cal open­ing of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block on Mon­day, Row­ley de­fend­ed T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty fol­low­ing threats of US visa re­stric­tions an­nounced by Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion against gov­ern­ments util­is­ing Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sion pro­grammes.

“Out of the blue now, we have been called hu­man traf­fick­ers be­cause we hire tech­ni­cal peo­ple who we pay top dol­lar, equal to lo­cal rates. We are now be­ing ac­cused of tak­ing part in a pro­gramme where peo­ple are be­ing ex­ploit­ed. That’s some­body’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion. Of course, there are lo­cal peo­ple here en­cour­ag­ing them to take away our US visas,” Row­ley said.

He added, “I just came back from Cal­i­for­nia, and if I nev­er go back there again in my life, I will en­sure that the sov­er­eign­ty of T&T is known to its peo­ple and re­spect­ed by all.”

Yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions were need­ed on the pro­posed pol­i­cy and re­gion­al lead­ers should not be silent over the de­vel­op­ment.

“We all in the re­gion should stand up and tell the Unit­ed States this is not ac­cept­able. We might run in­to dif­fi­cul­ties de­pend­ing (on) how far they want to go with it and take it an­oth­er step and ratch­et it up and im­pose sanc­tions on us. In my view, we should first state that this is an un­rea­son­able pol­i­cy and then ne­go­ti­ate from there, see where it goes from there.”

The US threat­ened ac­tion against those in­volved with Cuban mis­sions, which US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio has de­scribed as “forced labour.” It is es­ti­mat­ed that over 24,000 Cuban med­ical health­care pro­fes­sion­als are cur­rent­ly work­ing with health mis­sions across the Caribbean.

Al­so re­spond­ing to Row­ley’s stance yes­ter­day was UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who la­belled it a dis­trac­tion.

“He threw out the Cuban com­ments to dis­tract from the hu­mil­i­at­ing fact that he was open­ing an in­com­plete, over-bud­get, over­time con­struc­tion site. The hos­pi­tal block is in­com­plete, lacks most equip­ment and can­not ac­cept pa­tients. It’s the lat­est em­bar­rass­ment from a man who has no achieve­ments in 10 years as Prime Min­is­ter.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was time the coun­try paid at­ten­tion to its own med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.

“We should be putting our peo­ple first. Our first pri­or­i­ty should be cre­at­ing jobs for lo­cal med­ical per­son­nel be­cause we spend bil­lions in sub­ven­tions, GATE and schol­ar­ships to ed­u­cate them.”

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion­al Al­liance leader Gary Grif­fith, al­so called for the mat­ter to be treat­ed in a mea­sured man­ner.

“Show them the da­ta, show them the doc­u­ments, show that we are dif­fer­ent from oth­er coun­tries that may be do­ing that and by us be­ing dif­fer­ent to them, then it could en­sure that the doc­tors re­main and there are no visa re­stric­tions. That is the type of win-win sit­u­a­tion that is re­quired, politi­cians must find so­lu­tions and let us not be high-hand­ed.”

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves, Do­mini­ca Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Skeritt, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne and Grena­da Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell have de­fend­ed their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­gramme, say­ing they hope a res­o­lu­tion will be worked out with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.