Sixteen Cuban doctors in transit between South Africa and Cuba absconded on Monday and sought political asylum in Spain.
Some of the doctors told colleagues and friends that life in Cuba was depressing and an exchange programme with South Africa had given them a means of escape. They did not like restrictions in their employment contracts, which appeared to be unchangeable.
Since the programme started in 1994, many doctors from Cuba have fled from South Africa to neighbouring countries or have absconded en route to Cuba, mainly to Spanish-speaking countries.
Obligations and restrictions in their contracts force the doctors to pay a large percentage of their earnings to the Cuban government, and bar them from seeking permanent residence in South Africa should they marry locals. Those who have their children with them in South Africa must send them back to Cuba when they turn 15.
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'I don't know why they don't seek political asylum here' Doctors said their lives had been disrupted and all attempts to review and change their contracts had failed.
Ronald Green-Thompson, the KwaZulu-Natal secretary for health, said the South African department of health relied heavily on more than 450 Cuban doctors and other foreign nationals to provide services at the country's rural hospitals.
"I don't know why they don't seek political asylum here. It's very sad that they abscond," Green-Thompson said.
Rosemary Vazquez, the South African wife of Raul Vazquez, a Cuban doctor, said it was an indictment on South Africa that doctors felt badly treated and had to abscond.
Her husband recently obtained a high court order preventing the department of health from firing him. He was sacked from his job after he married her and sought permanent residence.
'We understand they are human' Of the 16 doctors who absconded, one left his pregnant Cuban girlfriend in South Africa and two had been senior specialists at a Kwa-Dukuza, KwaZulu-Natal, hospital.
Fears that the Cuban doctor programme was collapsing were further highlighted by a visit to Cuba on Tuesday by two senior programme co-ordinators, Colin Mahuba of the department of health and Jamie Davies from the international health office.
Green-Thompson insisted the two men's visits were for different reasons, but sources in the department of foreign affairs said they went to discuss the problem of the growing number of doctors absconding, and also to find ways to salvage the programme.
"The programme is doing a world of good for us," said Green-Thompson. "We would actually like more Cubans to come in as our own doctors want to emigrate or refuse to carry out service in rural areas. There are rules the foreign doctors have to follow, but we understand they are human although there is nothing we can do about the rules.
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