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The Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing mount­ing ques­tions and grow­ing scruti­ny af­ter fail­ing to re­spond to re­peat­ed re­quests for clar­i­ty on the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment in the Cuban med­ical mis­sion pro­gramme, even as re­gion­al coun­ter­parts be­gin step­ping away from sim­i­lar arrange­ments.

De­spite mul­ti­ple at­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to ob­tain com­ment, nei­ther Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar nor Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has pro­vid­ed any re­sponse on the mat­ter.

This si­lence comes at a crit­i­cal time. The Unit­ed States has in­ten­si­fied its crit­i­cism of Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions, brand­ing as­pects of the pro­gramme as state-spon­sored hu­man traf­fick­ing and warn­ing of po­ten­tial con­se­quences for par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries.