• BRANDON VAN WYKTHE Rehoboth Town Council wants the Reho Spa recreational resort that is lying idle back. The facility at the town is owned by the environment ministry and is managed by the Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR).
In 2014, the NWR handed over the facility to the Rehoboth Community Trust. Both the NWR and the community trust could not be reached yesterday for comment on why the resort is in a delapidated state.
Natalia !Goagoses, who was appointed to run the affairs of the council in March this year after the suspension of the town’s management, however, yesterday said the resort belongs to the environment ministry, and is managed by Namibia Wildlife Resorts (NWR).
“I can’t accept the current condition of that place,” she stated.
/Goagoses said the Reho Spa is one of the most well-known tourist attractions at the town.
“Tourists and locals always come and enquire about the place, and I am ashamed when I have to give them a reply.
“I have already expressed my desire to take that facility back because the people who are currently running the place have killed it,” she lamented.
/Goagoses said the facility has been standing vacant for the past seven years, and that it can be renovated and used to employ Rehoboth residents.
“We are yelling ‘unemployment’ and ‘no work’ while this place can be fixed up and used to employ the youth who are roaming the streets of Rehoboth,” she stressed.
She went on to say that she had a very fruitful meeting with the senior management of NWR in June this year.
“I urged them to give me the key to the place so that I can go and clean it up because it is within the jurisdiction of Rehoboth,” she added. “The NWR board recommended that the title deeds be re-transferred to the Rehoboth Town Council, and only after this will we become the legal owners of that facility. Only then can we talk of what we intend to do with the facility,” /Goagoses said.
She revealed that the council had several business options to make the place operational, and that as soon as the facility is transferred into the town council’s name, she will start working on it.
The environment ministry’s public relations officer, Romeo Muyunda, said a process had already been started to transfer the ownership of the spa.
“I am just not sure of the exact details of the transaction,” he noted.
Numerous attempts to get comment from NWR on the facility were unsuccessful.
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