By Benjamin Noria
HAVANA TIMES – Many professionals are leaving Cuba in search of a better life, and you can deduce that the brain drain is especially dangerous right now. A brain drain, or talent drain, is the loss of professionals and scientists with a university education who decide to emigrate to try their chances in another country.
It seems the Cuban Government has no concern about this mass exodus of professionals. This is clear because no visible strategy has been drawn up to hold onto this personnel.
Doctors’ wages haven’t gone up; working conditions haven’t improved; a transport system that ensures professionals can get to work hasn’t been created; a stimulus plan with trips to hotels, beaches and campsites for affordable prices hasn’t been created.
They are wasting resources training doctors, lawyers, and engineers in Cuba. The only thing they’re doing is exporting brilliant researchers and scientists to the United States, Europe and other Latin American countries.
The economic crisis is the major factor for Cuba’s brain drain. An intolerable and brutal crisis. Furthermore, they aren’t investing in scientific and technological breakthroughs in Cuba. This means that every industry is declining and as a result, graduates in different fields can’t find fulfillment in their jobs.
The sugar industry is in ruins, as is the fishing industry, beekeeping, poultry, agriculture and many more. Nothing works. The same Government has been mismanaging the Cuban economy for the 64 years it’s been in power.
Nevertheless, totalitarian governments are founded upon a hate culture and contempt for intelligence. Why? Well, that’s because when a person studies, they feel liberated from religion and ideology, and what dictatorships really want is to have complete mind control over their subordinates.
George Orwell’s book “1984” is an example of this phenomenon. The British author’s book talks about the omnipresent Big Brother, which is typical of autocratic, absolutist and dictatorial governments, a society where information is manipulated and there is mass surveillance and political repression.
That said, if the Government doesn’t solve this problem of Cuba’s brain drain, the entire world will shower it with criticism and they’ll suffocate themselves in despair, because every country needs specialized professionals to work in their courts of law, hospitals, universities, and institutes.
Also, other countries even offer student grants for master’s degrees and doctorates to prevent brain drain, as well as post-graduate and pre-graduate courses. These grants are even offered to international students.
What does the Cuban Government have to offer? They can’t do anything because they don’t have anything, not even for their own citizens, because they’ve spent everything on repression and propaganda. The only thing they have is to wait and see what this country’s very uncertain future might be.
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.
