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Ilse Fredericks, Johannesburg. Sunday Times (Johannesburg).
February 16, 2003. All Africa.com.
Communists try to dismiss health professionals who want to make a life
in South Africa
A CUBAN doctor faces dismissal from his job at a South African hospital
because he resigned from his country's communist party.
Dr Mario Menchero, an orthopaedic surgeon at Grey's Hospital in
Pietermaritzburg, was told at a meeting of Cuban doctors last week that he would
be dismissed because he had given up his membership of the Cuban Communist
Party.
Menchero has been in South Africa since 1998 as part of an employment
agreement between the South African Health Department and the Cuban government
to relieve the shortage of doctors at state hospitals here.
Said Menchero: "I was told that I was a traitor and had turned my back
on my country, and that I would be dropped from the programme. I don't know how
political problems have anything to do with my job. They don't have the right to
take my job away."
Menchero's lawyer threatened to seek a High Court interdict if the
KwaZulu-Natal Health Department did not respond to a request not to fire the
doctor.
Cuba's chief programme coordinator, Dr Jaime Davis, confirmed that Cuban
officials who attended the meeting had informed him that they wanted Menchero "off
the programme".
In a separate development, the Braamfontein Labour Court ordered the Limpopo
Health Department to reinstate seven Cuban doctors whose services were
terminated this week.
The doctors were allegedly fired after Davis sent a letter to the department
claiming Cuba's minister of public health had stated that doctors requesting
South African citizenship should be dropped from the programme.
Last year, the Pietermaritzburg High Court ordered the national Health
Department to reinstate Raul Rodriquez Vazquez, who was fired for marrying a
South African. The judgment implied that Cuban doctors could marry South
Africans without fear of losing their jobs.
Dr Ricardo Gutierrez, one of the seven doctors reinstated this week, said he
was relieved and happy to be able to go back to work. Gutierrez married his
South African wife, Anna-Elmarie Pieterse, in August 2000 and obtained permanent
residence on February 7 this year.
"I couldn't believe it when I received the letter to say I was fired. I
thought there was a misunderstanding. I had never opted out of the agreement as
I love working in South Africa," Gutierrez said.
"The economic situation in South Africa is better. Even though we're
required to send 57% of our salary back to Cuba, I still earn much more than I
would in Cuba. M y wife and children are here and I have built a life with them
in South Africa."
The acting superintendent of the W K Knobel Hospital in Limpopo, Dr Norge
Escobar, who was also threatened with dismissal, said firing the doctors because
they had obtained permanent residence was a violation of their basic human
rights.
Escobar said he had fallen in love with South Africa as soon as he had
arrived here.
"I have been serving the Limpopo community for over seven years and I
have become very close to them," he said.
"I can also make a better living here and give my wife a better life. I
have spoken against the [Cuban] government while I have been here and I will be
immediately taken to prison if I go back to Cuba."
Dr Jorge Donato, a gynaecologist at the Bela Bela Hospital in Limpopo, said
in an affidavit he believed the Cuban government was putting pressure on the SA
Health Department "to harass or dismiss me so as to make an example of me
and punish me for marrying a South African" .
When asked why Cubans who had been given South African citizenship were
being dropped from the programme, Davis said: "The agreement between Cuba
and South Africa was for Cuban citizens to work in South Africa."
Jo-Anne Collinge, spokesman for the Health Department, said she could not
comment on the case as it had not yet been finalised.
The department has been given until tomorrow to oppose the interim order. | 
