Health Minister Dr Michael Darville
By RASHAD ROLLE
Tribune News Editor
rrolle@tribunemedia.net
MOST Cuban healthcare workers in The Bahamas are eager to remain in the country under new contracts directly with the government, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville said, but the administration is still waiting for word from the United States on whether its proposal meets Washington’s approval.
Dr Darville’s comments came after revealing last month that the government will sever ties with Cuba’s state-run medical recruitment agency and instead offer direct contracts to Cuban healthcare professionals currently working in The Bahamas.
Multiple international reports and the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons assessments have alleged that Cuba uses coercive measures to control its overseas workers, including confiscating passports, restricting movement, subjecting them to surveillance, and threatening reprisals against them or their families if they defect or criticise the programme. Nonetheless, Dr Darville told The Tribune yesterday that whether the Cuban healthcare workers can remain in The Bahamas does not involve the Cuban government.
The shake-up in The Bahamas’ Cuban healthcare contracts began after US officials warned they could revoke visas for Bahamian government officials and their relatives if the country continued to participate in Cuba’s labour export programme to hire medical workers, an arrangement Washington argued amounted to forced labour.
A leaked 2022 contract, published by Cuba Archive, showed The Bahamas paid up to $12,000 per month per Cuban doctor, while the doctors themselves received just $990 to $1,200. The remainder went to Cuba’s state-run agency, Comercializadora de Servicios Médicos Cubanos (CSMC).
Despite Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis and Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell initially downplaying concerns over the pay structure, the threat of visa sanctions forced the government’s hand.
Dr Darville has said the country currently employs three Cuban nurses and three doctors — two ophthalmologists and one optometrist — along with X-ray technicians, physiotherapists, and biomedical specialists.
He has said the government is also stepping up efforts to recruit doctors and nurses from other countries, including India, the Philippines, and Ghana, to reduce dependence on any single source of foreign healthcare labour.
Comments
ExposedU2C 1 week, 1 day ago
This arse-hole Darville and Davis just don't give a rat's-arse that the family members back in Cuba of these human-trafficked slaves are under serious threat of harm from the greedy authoritarian Cuban regime members who are profiteering with certain Bahamian government officials off of this most disgusting and evil slave-trade scheme.
tell_it_like_it_is 1 week, 1 day ago
While I didn't agree with The Bahamas giving so much money to the Cuban government for Cuban workers, coming back and asking permission from the US is pathetic!
Is The Bahamas a sovereign nation or what? Do what is right, not just what the US wants. Corruption exists in the US as well and they can never be a good measuring stick for anyone.🤦♂️
truetruebahamian 1 week ago
Very much yes indeed.
truetruebahamian 6 days, 1 hour ago
The U.S. ask no permission from us for anything. It is good to have bilateral agreements, however we should never be subservient to.
ExposedU2C 6 days, 9 hours ago
The Bahamas is in the sad state that it is in today because so many Bahamians like you have been brain-washed into thinking the wrongs committed by the governments of other countries somehow justify the wrongs committed by our own government.
tell_it_like_it_is 5 days, 23 hours ago
Let's read Bahamas! Geez, are you a US representative ExposedU2C?
The comment clearly stated that there was no agreement with The Bahamas paying the Cuban government. So your comment is not germane to the argument being made. At least let your response make sense. SMH
ExposedU2C 5 days, 4 hours ago
My friend, if you believe what Darville is saying here, then you must also believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause.
Porcupine 1 week, 1 day ago
"Dr. Darville has said the government is also stepping up efforts to recruit doctors and nurses from other countries, including India, the Philippines, and Ghana, to reduce dependence on any single source of foreign healthcare labour.." And, the reason we need foreign healthcare workers? Couldn't have anything to do with the pay, working conditions and respect, could it? Whereby our own doctors and nurses are fleeing this country? This is not the reason, is it?
bogart 1 week ago
Very good Porcupine. Added to the doctors and nurses are the engineers, civil, mechanical and the whole line of engineering specialists, advanced financial specialists, school teachers etcetc.
Roofs of govt building have been constructed and collapsed, schools have been built with defects in GB, seawalls in Freeport, BEC engines catching fire, illegal shantytown with structural building code defects, baseball stadiun needed more works, water treatment need more works, Post Office building on Gladstone bought but not suitabble, airplane flying without safety devices for around 10 years until stopped, roadworks with pooled water areas, flooding residential areas with septic tanks, rusty piped drinking water, commercial complexes designed and published for approval without adequate parking, etcetcetc.
Setbacks in these areas and then corrective measures likely adds up to hundreds or billions of $$$$$$$$$$ dollars and years of setbacks of national development and comfort and progress of Bahamian people and money of the privileged or fortunate poured out of the nation.
Observer 1 week, 1 day ago
Corruption is spelt U-S-A. Their 'all-for-me' tactics are worse than communism.
ExposedU2C 6 days, 9 hours ago
And in your small mind that is all you need to know to somehow justify our government being engaged in a modern day slave-trade scheme that meets the very definition of a human trafficking crime.
bogart 1 week, 1 day ago
The procedures of the matter should NOT BYPASS the CITIZENS of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
The matter should be put to the people by REFERENDUM.
Bahamians with their guests should not be unilaterally bypassed in the situation of the service of MEDICAL CARE .
PRIVY COUNCIL. ----- If there is a legal impasse and if the govt. has to go outside the country, then it should be the PRIVY COUNCIL as a Bahamian decider and as to whether it is a "worse of the worst" on the matter on whether the Cuban Medical professionals remain or not to remain in the sovereign nation of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
REFERENDUM ----- Bahamian people should not be bypassed on matters relating to the last changes of getting Cuban medical services especially in hidden sums of money involved much later revealed to the Bahamian people.
bogart 1 week, 1 day ago
........PRIVY COUNCIL ----- the SAME way that the legal decider is used to decide on matters of Haitians in dispute and Jamaicans in dispute, the the same way the Cubans must be legally considered by the Privy Council as whether to get to stay in the Bahamas or leave. And if the Bahamian laws are broken then there is the Detention Centre just like all others.
bahamianson 1 week, 1 day ago
Referendum? You mean like the 2 million we spent…wait…the 2 million the plp spent on the numbers referendum and did not honor our votes. They did what they wanted to do and ignored the people. Why are they still a party or in power? The country with the biggest stick , WINS! End of story about this pie in the sky that we are a sovereign nation… Bull backs!! You have been bamboozelled!
GodSpeed 1 week, 1 day ago
Those Cubans will be on the first plane to the US if they can. I don't blame them.
Bonefishpete 1 week ago
Sovereign Nations Premier goes to Florida for medical care. Sovereign Nation have no Hospitals?
moncurcool 1 week ago
Seriously?????
Every independence celebration needs to be canceled immediately, as it is clear we are not an independent nation.
Porcupine 1 week ago
Don't worry. We are ALL owned. We took our eye off the ball for too long. Independence is an illusion. We have now borrowed so much money, and signed away our children's future that independence is merely a word. Like the way this administration uses the word "transparency". These words have no meaning here.
ExposedU2C 6 days, 9 hours ago
Yup.
rosiepi 6 days, 23 hours ago
Where did all the 80+ Cuban nurses go, all the teachers?
There is no way the Cuban gov’t is going to allow their medical professionals to work w/o strings to the state and Davis&Co won’t have it either, they can’t afford to let them go to the States.
The better solution, ie. for Bahamian citizens would have been to beef up their nursing program at BC and hire the nurses who sit waiting for permission to practice their profession!
And that stupid feint and good money after bad to the Baptist College, their much ballyhooed ‘new nursing program’ is no such thing.
Students will pay tuition and outrageous fees (mire than a year at the Nursing Program at Bahamas College for a ‘introductory pre-college nursing program’, to get them ‘ready’ Thats all they have a that school, after a student graduates they’ll face the same 2 year program at BC with an additional year of fees as well, there’s no credit.
Only in the Bahamas folks!
bogart 6 days, 9 hours ago
A possible enticement to first get back the thousands of Bahamian professionals who have fled to all corners of the planet.
Some 1,362, 205 acres dry Crown Land held by the Government of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and certainly can have a contractual formula arrangement involving Crown land land to start encouraging skilled professionals, to return back to the development of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.
Neighbouring smaller country of Turks and Caicos has been offering land as encouragement of up to 3rd generation? residents to left to return to Turks and Caicos. A Bahamian political party has been for some time been offering free Crown land as part a program for Bahamians first.
sheeprunner12 6 days, 8 hours ago
How many of you recall this?????
The 242 Government (under Ingraham) and the Cuban Government made an agreement to send Bahamians to Cuban universities to train in many professional areas, including medicine.
The 242 Govt encouraged Bahamians to go to Cuba on scholarships, but when the 242 young ppl came back with their degrees, many were not certified, including the doctors. Was it the BMC or the Christie Govt that screwed up these young ppl lives?
But 20 years later under Davis, the same Government (& BMC) is now importing & approving Cuban doctors and nurses who were trained at the same Cuban universities as the Bahamians back in the day.
So, what has changed with the Cuban medical degrees & training??????
Our politicians are really stupid assholes. 🤬🤬🤬
quavaduff 5 days, 11 hours ago
It's shameful to even suggest asking the current very corrupt trump administration for permission to do anything. They showed their disrespect by appointing an intellectually challenged ambassador. This current Bahamian government is a disgrace.
ExposedU2C 5 days, 4 hours ago
Yup. Trump decided very early on that our corrupt and incompetent government really deserves nothing more than an American ambassador whose intellect is on par with that of our own ambassador to the U.S. and that of Fwreddy Boy Mitchell. LOL
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