Belize and Cuba established relations in the last term of the UDP government in the mid 90’s and after 10 years of serious relationship building by the pro-Castro Musa administration, it’s time for the UDP to salute the revolution. The occasion is the 11th session of the Belize-Cuba Joint Commission for Economic and Technical Cooperation and the Republic of Cuba Appreciation and Solidarity week which runs from July 20th to the 26th. It started last night and Foreign Affairs Minister Wilfred Elrington underscored the importance of the Belize Cuba relationship.
Hon. Wilfred Elrington, Minister of Foreign Affairs
“We have numerous Cuban doctors and nurses working in our hospitals. It is not that we haven’t trained doctors and nurses. Too many of them have found it more profitable to leave our shores for one reason or the other and I am not knocking them. I myself have a brother and sister in law who are medical practitioners living abroad but it just doesn’t seem right to me that our people are not working as doctors and nurses to care for our own people and that the Cubans with their meagre resources have got to be coming to Belize to look after our people and I say to myself what happens the day they decide they can no longer continue to do it. What are we going to do? Who else is going to provide us medical care at the rate that the Cubans are providing?”
Orlando Requeijio Gual, Cuban Vice-Minister of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation is leading the Cuban delegation. They’ll have a press conference tomorrow at the end of the joint commission meeting to discuss the way forward.
