KINGSTOWN, St Vincent (CMC) — St Vincent and the Government says it is gathering information as requested by the United States (US) on Cuban medical workers, even as Kingstown maintains its position that the workers are not victims of human trafficking as alleged by Washington.

“All the data are being gathered — relevant data — and would be sent to our friends in the United States State Department. We do not have any human trafficking or exploitation of Cuban professionals in St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the facts will show all of this,” Prime Minister of St Vincent and Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves said on his weekly show on the state-owned NBC Radio.

The Donald Trump administration recently announced that it intends to revoke the visas of foreign government officials whose countries employ Cuban doctors and nurses.

US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is due in the Caribbean next week, said Washington was announcing “the expansion of an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy that targets forced labour linked to the Cuban labour export programme.

“This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the
Cuban labour export programme, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions”.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who left Cuba in pursuit of the American dream, said in the statement posted on the US Department of State’s website, that the new policy also applies to the immediate family of those people supporting the Cuban programme.

However, Prime Minister Gonsalves said St Vincent and the Grenadines has “a modern, progressive regime of labour laws, and these laws encompass, too, our obligations under the international conventions to which we have subscribed, and we take all of these obligations very seriously.

“And I am hopeful that those who have wrong information, mistaken information, would dispassionately look at the facts and not be unduly influenced by any political or ideological considerations.”

Gonsalves said he was “absolutely sure” that the situation was the same in all the Caribbean islands where Cuba medical professionals work. Some regional leaders have already indicated that they are
willing to have their existing United States visas revoked as they maintain that the Cuban health programme plays a significant role in their respective health systems.

He reiterated that their compensation package is equivalent to, or in some cases, better than people in comparable circumstances or grades in the public service.

“Their compensation package includes a wage, a salary, but also the entire package and put together so that it doesn’t distort what we pay other people,” he said, adding that the compensation package also
includes furnished accommodation.

“We pay for the light, the water, the internet, transportation to and from the place of their home to their place of work; free medical treatment, if anything happens to any of them. They have their annual
holidays, the month holidays, we pay their passage to Cuba and back, too.

“How is this forced? We pay for you at the start and at the end. You work no more than 40 hours a week, no more than eight hours a day.”

He said that as is the case with all doctors, the Cubans would be called out to work if there are emergencies, adding that they work exclusively for the state for eight hours a day.

“But they’re permitted to practice privately; … many of them do, and that money is their money,” the prime minister said.

“Does anybody think that St Vincent and the Grenadines will be party to forced labour? Anybody reasonably?” he said, adding, “There’s a convention which you subscribe to”.

He said most of the Cubans working in the public sector are doctors, but a few work in the ministries of transport and works and agriculture and fisheries.

“Occasionally, you may have for a short term, somebody may come into culture, somebody may come at [the Ministry of] Education,” he said, adding that Cubans are not the only people who come to St Vincent and the Grenadines on overseas missions.

“This is one, a mission where persons are paid. By the way, even while they are paid here in the way in which I’ve just indicated, they get their salaries in Cuba; it’s waiting there for them in Cuban pesos in their bank account.”

He said the Cuban workers here are free to travel within the country adding that “when they finish their tour of duty, they are free”.

“They can sever their link with the employment in Cuba and seek employment here. And some of them are employed by the state here, not being part of the brigade,” Prime Minister Gonsalves told radio
listeners, adding that there are Cubans working in the private sector who were recruited from Cuba.

“I understand the rule is that to maintain their Cuban connection, they have to go back once every two years, I think the rule is…our friends in the United States of America are mistaken on this matter. Now I have just given you a synopsis so that persons can reflect and cogitate on what I’ve said here,” he added.