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Jesse Ramdeo

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has come out in de­fence of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sov­er­eign­ty fol­low­ing the re­cent threat of US visa re­stric­tions an­nounced by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion against gov­ern­ments util­is­ing Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions. The pro­gramme, which has been vi­tal to health­care sys­tems across the re­gion for decades, has been de­scribed in a re­port by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion as con­sti­tut­ing “forced labour” and a form of “hu­man traf­fick­ing”.

How­ev­er, while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ny to mark the prac­ti­cal com­ple­tion of the $1.3 bil­lion Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block yes­ter­day, Row­ley took aim at the Trump pol­i­cy and reaf­firmed this coun­try’s re­la­tion with Cu­ba.