14ymedio, Madrid, 2 October 2024 — The hiring of Cuban doctors is, once again, a source of controversy in South Africa. As was revealed in the local parliament last week, the Gauteng Department of Health – the province where Pretoria and Johannesburg are located – mistakenly continued to pay, for one year, seven Cuban health workers who had already left the country.
The specialists, who were part of a group of 28 hired in 2020 to help at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, ended their contract on May 14, 2021, but continued to receive their salary until the same date the following year. In total, the province paid more than 3.9 million rands (about 225,000 dollars); that is, 557,000 rands for each person (more than 32,000 dollars).
Of that amount, said the provincial head of Health, Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko, 1.2 million rands were recovered, but not yet the remaining 2.7 million. To do this, the authorities say, they have contacted the Cuban government, which has not publicly commented on the issue. Nor has the Cuban government given details of where they deposited those salaries, if inside or outside the country, or to whom; if in an individual way, to each worker or to the Marketer of Medical Services, the usual intermediary between the Regime and the contracting countries.
The authorities also excused themselves by saying that the officials who extended the contracts claimed not to have been aware that the Cuban professionals were no longer in South Africa.
“Someone made a mistake. It could be a crime, in fact”
“There was an overpayment that was made as a result of the extension of the contracts of those health workers without following the required process,” Nkomo-Ralehoko said on television. In addition, “Someone made a mistake. It could be a crime, in fact, but investigations have been carried out, so we will definitely take action in this regard.”
The data was revealed last week in a written response to South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) party, persistently critical of the Government for the import of specialists from the Island. Jack Bloom, a member of DA who has been overseeing and denouncing the hiring of Cuban doctors for years, described in a statement as “outrageous” the fact that the missing money has not yet been recovered – “more than two years after it was squandered” – and complained that the responsible officials “have not yet been sanctioned.”
For Bloom, what happened is “one more example of the deep incompetence and possible corruption in this department.” There is no reason, says the opposition politician, “to hire Cuban doctors when so many local doctors are unemployed.”
Last April, DA managed to get the Gauteng government to reveal what it had paid annually for 11 health workers from the Island: approximately 14.3 million rands or 750,218 dollars. The authorities then detailed the spending by district: in Johannesburg, 4,788,600 rands ($251,328), for four doctors; in Sedibeng, 2,833,917 rands ($148,754) for two doctors; in Thelle Mogoerane, 1,642,858 rands ($86,224) for one doctor; and in the Tembisa Hospital 1,197,150 rands ($62,845) also for one.
At the beginning of 2024, South Africa put at 700 the number of national doctors who did not get a job in the public sector, a figure that, according to the Government, has improved compared to last year, when the number was 800.
What happened is “one more example of the deep incompetence and possible corruption in this department”
In 1996, South Africa and Cuba signed a bilateral agreement for the implementation of the Nelson Mandela/Fidel Castro Medical Collaboration Program. “The program was established to address the excessive concentration of health personnel in urban areas and in the exclusive private sector, as well as to increase the number of qualified health professionals,” said the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Naledi Pandor, during a parliamentary debate on Cuba.
The matter, however, has been the result of countless controversies over the years. One of the most recent was linked to a donation of three million dollars (50 million rands) from the Government of South Africa to Cuba that has remained blocked by the courts since October 2023, when a judge ordered it stopped until a legal scrutiny was properly carried out, since it was adopted without a quorum in the advisory committee.
It is not the only case that has generated friction between the Government and the opposition. The sending of engineers and additional doctors during the pandemic – for which at least 14 million dollars were spent – have caused different controversies, in addition to the one in 2021 concerning a party held by several South African students at the University of Villa Clara, which ended in blows by the Cuban Police, who said they had received an “out of control” report that forced them to intervene.
Another major scandal was the sale of interferon alpha 2b, whose purchase was not authorized by the pharmaceutical authority of South Africa but was acquired with the consent of the Armed Forces, under the category of a “defense weapon” by believing – they claimed – that Covid-19 could be a bacteriological attack. The amount paid for that product amounted to more than two million dollars, which would have been much more if two subsequent shipments had not been canceled.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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