Health Care Trust wins tender to lease Woodlands town houses

Mernat Mafirakurewa Business Editor
The Zimbabwe Health Care Trust (ZHCT) has won the tender for 22 three-bedroomed Woodlands town houses in Bulawayo being leased by the National Social Security Authority.
The country’s two leading hospitality entities African Sun and Rainbow Tourism Group had their bids to convert the town houses into accommodation facilities rejected after the rentals they offered were adjudged to be too low.

African Sun had proposed to convert the town houses into special hotel accommodation while RTG wanted to convert the property into a lodge.
ZHCT which won the bid wants to use the property to offer accommodation for staff at Ekusileni Medical Centre when it commences operations.

“The offer by African Sun and RTG was too low in terms of rental income. Therefore it has now been decided to offer the accommodation to Ekusileni Medical Centre through the new hospital administrator,” reads part of a report compiled by NSSA.

At the time the housing project was completed in 1996, the project, NSSA said, was very popular attracting both middle and high income tenants but it became increasingly difficult to adjust rentals during the high inflation.

“The authority decided to evict all tenants due to failure to pay rentals. The eviction process went through the litigation process. This process was very long until a decision later was passed in favour of the authority,” NSSA said.

ZHCT is set to operate the Ekusileni health facility.
A number of investors including Apollo Group of Hospitals India have expressed interest to operate the multi-million dollar health facility but first preference was given to ZHCT.

“NSSA provided a loan of $6 million to ZHCT. It was intended to open the hospital first on June 30. This opening failed, then date moved to October 2013, which also failed and the next target was December 30, 2013. This date failed again resulting in a new date of March 30, 2014. The authority’s view was that if ZHCT fails, then a tender for an operator will be floated,” NSSA said.

Meanwhile, the authority recently completed a $1,5 million refurbishment exercise of the Workers Compensation Fund – Rehabilitation Centre.
The centre comprises a gymnasium, hydrotherapy unit, electrotherapy, clinic, leather workshop, welding workshop and other training facilities.