Cuban health workers interested in staying will sign a new employment contract with the country’s Ministry of Health.
14ymedio, Olea Gallardo, Havana, June 17, 2025 — As announced, the Bahamas will directly hire Cuban doctors who are serving on the islands and cancel its agreements with the regime. This was announced by the Bahamian Minister of Health, Michael Darville, in a speech to Parliament on Monday about the government budget for 2025.
Darville said he was in Havana two weeks ago to “review the hiring protocols” of health workers with Cuban recruitment agencies. “After difficult negotiations, we are ready to announce the cancelation of all existing contracts with the Government of Havana and the signing of direct contracts with Cuban health workers,” he said.
Health workers who agree with the new terms, said the minister, will “sign a new employment contract with my ministry” and be able to stay in the country, deployed on the Family Islands (the myriad of islands that are not Grand Bahama and New Providence, whose capital is Nassau). “Those who are not interested in this new agreement will have time to settle their affairs and return to Cuba,” he emphasized.
The Cuban health staff currently consists of 35 persons: 3 ophthalmologists, 3 nurses, 10 biomedical engineers, 8 laboratory technicians and 11 x-ray technicians
As specified by the minister, the Cuban health staff currently consists of 35 people: 3 ophthalmologists, 3 nurses, 10 biomedical engineers, 8 laboratory technicians and 11 x-ray technicians, who, he said, “have recently completed a new training program at Princess Margaret Hospital” in Nassau. Most of them, he said, are willing to serve on the Family Islands.
Darville emphasized that all Cuban workers “receive the same benefits” as local workers. “They are well treated, they are respected in our country, we are grateful for their service,” he declared, while assuring that the contracts between both countries were articulating the changes.
In his address to Parliament, the Minister highlighted the shortage of health professionals in the country, including doctors and nurses from Ghana. At the same time, he promised that they will train and hire Bahamians to “fill in the gaps.”
He also said that the recruitment of Cuban teachers and health workers is suspended pending the outcome of talks with the US, which last February threatened to restrict visas for officials from foreign countries involved in what it called “labor exploitation” of Cuban workers abroad, including health workers.
“They are well treated, they are respected in our country, we are grateful their service”
Two days after the Bahamian Prime Minister, Philip Davis, held a meeting with US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on May 6, Davis told the press that he would renegotiate the labor agreements with Havana and that, from then on, he would pay all the Cuban health workers directly.
At the meeting, according to Davis, he explained the situation to US officials and denied that the Cuban doctors were being exploited for their labor. “We were able to communicate this to them, and I think they were satisfied that we are not involved in any forced labor that we know of,” he said.
“If forced labor is occurring in our country with the Cubans, we have no record of it,” he added, while indicating that an exhaustive analysis was being carried out to determine whether there was any “element” of this type present in the employment relationship. “If we discover something like this, it will be corrected,” he said.
Davis argued, with relevance, that the method of payment through the Cuban government was not extraordinary. The Prime Minister resorted to recalling how the US paid part of the wages of Bahamian seasonal workers to the UK before the islands became independent. “That is not an unknown concept or construct. But it is now considered an ingredient of forced labor. So we will address that and say to anyone we hire, ’Look, we’ll pay you directly into your account’.”
Archivo Cuba, at the end of April, published an investigation showing that the professionals on mission to the Bahamas receive only between 8% and 16% of what the Bahamian government pays to Havana or them – between 5,000 and 12,000 dollars a month. It added that the Bahamian statements were mainly for the US State Department, and it urged Nassau to hire the Cubans directly.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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