Despite the promise of a new $28 million homeless shelter that will be able to offer help to 200 people, it will take a number of years to built the complex providing money is allocated for it in next month's budget.

In the meantime the Government needs to ensure the present shelter Salvation Army-run hostel at Marsh Lane is adequately maintained.

In the wake of a request for more funding to carry out repairs at Marsh Lane, Health Minister Patrice Minors controversially said that, with all respect to the Salvation Army, she was "fed up" with repeated campaigns to boost funds.

Now with more details of the proposed new shelter being made public, the Salvation Army's divisional commander in Bermuda Major Lindsay Rowe said: "We are very excited that the shelter will be built and we are looking forward to working with the Government to submit a tender for its management.

"We think it is long overdue and welcome the fact that it is going to be a reality. However, it is going to take several years to build and the Works and Engineering department and the Salvation Army will have to work closely together on the repairs that need to be done at the current hostel."

Shadow health minister Louise Jackson toured the Marsh Lane hostel in December and raised the issue of its poor state of repair ? with gaping holes in the walls, rotten floors and damaged roof ? in the House of Assembly, which led to Mrs. Minors' "fed up" reply.

Although work on building a new shelter awaiting dependent on the outcome of next month's budget, the Health Ministry is now seeking tenders not only to run the facility but also the various associated addiction rehabilitation programmes, job training and advocacy programmes.

The Salvation Army presently provides such programmes through its Dreaming in Colour programme and assisting people to access the Harbour Lights project, said Major Lowe, indicating that the organisation would tender to continue to do so.

When asked yesterday who else might step forward to bid to run such programmes Mrs. Minors cited churches, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists which already provides meals to the needy, as an example of other groups that may wish to tender.

She said the Ministry was not going to wait three years for the new shelter to be built before tendering for the services to help the homeless.

Mrs. Minors added that she believed the Salvation Army and the Department of Works and Engineering were talking to one another about how to address current problems with the state of repair of the 25-year-old Marsh Lane hostel.