Talks over building of Mellieha home for the elderly

The government is negotiating the construction, development and running of a home for the elderly in Mellieha with one of the two bidders who tendered for the contract.

A spokesman for the Parliamentary Secretariat for the Care of the Elderly said yesterday that although the identity of the preferred bidder was not being disclosed at the moment, because the process was still open, talks were in progress with the company in question.

The Mellieha home will be built and run on the lines of a public private partnership (PPP).

The private consortium winning the tender will be entrusted with raising capital, building and finishing the home, abiding by standards set by the Department for the Elderly and running the home for a number of years at a daily fixed rate.

While the consortium will be focusing on hotel services at the home, the government will be monitoring the operations of the consortium through very particular service specifications tied to service failure and penalty points.

The home is planned to have 112 beds, 80 of them single. Double beds will have full en suite facilities. The building will host a chapel, a day centre, communal dining rooms and living areas, a rehabilitation area and a health centre. The home will also cater for elderly dependent clients and for disabled people.

The spokesman said the project should be fully operational by 2008.

Contractors will have strict time frames which had to be strictly observed in order to avoid penalties.

The government has been gradually introducing the PPP concept over a number of years and the Department for the Elderly has various forms of PPP schemes.

In the case of the Cospicua home, the government raised the capital and constructed the residence, but the daily running of the home was tendered to a private company for a number of years.

In the case of the Zejtun home, there were two PPPs. The same principles as those used for the Cospicua home applied for the first two floors of the building. When the home was extended, the private consortium had to raise the capital involved in the construction and complete the new floor, and also run the extension.

The Nationalist Party has been promising Mellieha residents a home for the elderly in a number of electoral manifestos and some observers believe the PN lost its majority on the Mellieha local council in 2002 and failed to regain it in the 2005 election because this promise did not materialise.