Fourteen Dominican students are recipients of scholarships from the Government of Cuba to pursue studies in medicine and engineering.
A small ceremony to present the scholarships was held at the Cuban Embassy on Wednesday June.
Cuban Ambassador to Dominica, His Excellency, Juan Carlos Frometta De La Rosa is proud that his country has been able to assist Dominica and other countries in human resource development for a number of years.
“As I always say, Cuba does not have oil, does not have diamond, we have the capacity to prepare human resource and this is what we share with Dominica. So, in the next week fourteen Dominican students will go to Cuba to study medicine, engineer, health technology and other careers.”
Dominica has been sending students to Cuba to be trained in various fields for the past thirty-nine years.
The Hon Minister for Health, a former Cuban graduate, Dr. Kenneth Darroux expressed thanks for the continued assistance of Cuba to Dominica.
“[Despite] the challenges that you had and still having, every year you have honoured your commitment in allowing our young people to pursue tertiary education, medicine and otherwise. As we speak we have close to a dozen or so of our students specialising in Cuba. This is all in an effort to boost our health service, our health product.”
The Hon Minister for Education and Human Resource Development, Petter Saint Jean noted that this relationship has produced a number of professionals who have significantly improved Dominica’s human resource capacity.
“We were made to believe that the ‘monster of communism’ could not yield any good thing for us here in Dominica, but today as we look back we can say that the relationships that were established just about 39 years ago have indeed yielded for us a cadre of people who are now taking the development of our country to new frontiers.”
He asked the students to value the opportunity and be committed to return to assist in Dominica’s development.
Nine students will pursue medicine while two will pursue health technology, and one each will study civil engineering, biotechnology and mechanical engineering.