By Staff Reporter

THE GOVERNMENT and United Kingdom Embassy are in a tussle over the financing of Bulawayo’s Cowdray Park Health Centre which is being used by Mthuli Ncube in his campaign trail.

Ncube who will be running for the MP seat in the constituency, likely squaring off with CCC’s Thokozani Khupe has the health centre in his campaign posters.

Cowdray Park Health Centre’s construction began last year with the government initially indicating that it had sourced financing for the project.

However UK ambassador Melanie Robinson in a tweet said a UK based firm NMS is constructing the health facility through the Zimbabwe Rural Healthcare Facilities Programme.

“Great visit to a hospital the UK’s NMS is building in Bulawayo, before going to ZITF. Work on the Cowdray Park facility started in 2022, one of 35 hospitals & clinics being expertly built here by NMS. Proud of this shared investment in providing better healthcare to Zimbabweans,” wrote Robinson.

Information ministry permanent secretary Nick Mangwana shot down the ambassador saying “The government put in cash of US$25 million of its own money and borrowed US$193 million offshore for the building of six 80-bed District Hospitals and thirty two 22- bed clinics. These hospitals include Stoneridge and Cowdray Park. A UK infrastructure company specializing in turnkey projects called NMS is the contractor doing the construction”.

The tussle exposed Ncube who had hijacked it in his campaign.

Quizzed on why Ncube was using the facility in his campaign trail, Mangwana curtly said: “Because it is being built through his facilitation.”