One hundred Guyanese students will travel to Cuba to study medicine, engineering, agriculture and various disciplines of sport and culture at the beginning of the 2002/2003 academic year.

They will form the first batch of the 300 scholarships offered to Guyana over the next three years and will be in addition to the students already studying there under the bilateral arrangement with Cuba and CARICOM-Cuba arrangement.

Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr Roger Luncheon, briefing reporters after yesterday's Cabinet meeting, said that ten places were reserved for Amerindians and the programmes would be administered by the Office of the President to which applications should be sent by all young persons with the relevant CXC and GCE O-level qualifications.

Luncheon said that 60 of the scholarships would be in the field of medicine at the undergraduate level. This is a seven-year programme and before it is completed a decision would be made as to whether the internships would be done in Cuba or Guyana or in both countries.

Another ten scholarships are to be awarded at the post-graduate level in Internal Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Surgery. Another 15, he said, would be in the field of engineering, ten in agriculture and five in various disciplines of sport and culture.

The cabinet secretary said that government would provide the awardees with airfares and maintenance support to cover such things as lab coats.

Asked about the cost of the scholarships, Luncheon said that he could not give a monetary value, but that the government was aware of the sacrifice the Cuban people were making in providing training opportunities for thousands of young people in Guyana and other developing countries.

He said that the government was also aware of the importance of the influx of a large number of trained Guyanese to the provision of goods and services to the Guyanese people.