Corporate
Sustainability Report
Being a fairly young entity, we have just embarked on our journey
to build a culture of corporate and social responsibility (“CSR”)
into the business practices of RHT. We believe by incorporating
such responsibilities into our corporate culture, we will be able
to achieve greater success for RHT. Apart from some of the
obvious benefits of CSR such as cost savings, the intangible
benefits of CSR may include more motivated employees and
greater transparency for our stakeholders including investors,
customers or suppliers.
In setting out on this journey, we have commenced exploring
responsibility in the various aspects of:
1) Financial
2) Governance
3) Social, including our employees
4) Environmental.
FINANCIAL
At RHT, we are always on the look out to deliver greater value
to unitholders. A major part of RHT’s business involves the
management of healthcare related infrastructure assets used
by medical operators. We currently work with our operator to
understand their infrastructure needs in connection with the types
of medical programmes where there is demand. As the needs of
the medical operator can vary depending on the medical
programmes, we may customise the Clinical Establishments.
By working hand in hand with our operator, and helping
to meet their needs, our operator will be able to generate
better revenues which in turn benefits RHT who has a share
of the operator’s revenue. At the same time, helping the operator
to be in good financial shape also means less credit risk
for RHT.
As RHT provides the financial means for asset enhancements or
expansions at the Clinical Establishments, RHT’s ability to avail
of competitively priced capital is important. Our unitholders
provide us with a key source of capital. As such, we constantly
engage with potential investors and existing unitholders to
keep them up to date on RHT. We ensure the RHT website
provides updated operational and financial information
to better aid our investors in having a clearer understanding of
RHT. Regular face-to-face meetings, conference calls as well as
features in media supplements are conducted to constantly reach
out to investors. An Annual General Meeting is held once a year
for our unitholders to engage with us personally.
GOVERNANCE
RHT is managed by Religare Health Trust Trustee-Manager
Pte. Ltd. (“Trustee-Manager”), which is based in Singapore,
and we are supported by the RHT team in India, where RHT’s
portfolio of Clinical Establishments are based and managed. There
are inherent conflicts of interests in the ownership and management
of RHT, and having a strong corporate governance culture
within the management team will aid in eliminating or
mitigating the conflicts of interests. Reducing such operational
risks in RHT through maintaining good corporate governance
helps increase the sustainability of RHT.
You may refer to the Corporate Governance report which can be
found on page 41 of this Annual Report, where we have outlined
our key corporate governance practices.
In addition, the Trustee-Manager has put in place processes to
ensure that high standards of integrity are upheld in our business
operations and conduct. We have a gifts and entertainment policy
which restricts the giving or receipt of gifts and entertainment
(whether in cash or in kind), which is in anyway unlawful or
unethnical, in order to gain any commercial, contractual or
regulatory advantage for RHT.
SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
People
Management believes that that its employees play a key role in the
development of RHT, and in turn it is the corporate’s responsibility
to grow its employees in order to achieve its end goal. In attracting,
growing and retaining its employees, we follow the following
guiding principles:
s
Recruiting and promoting employees based strictly on merit,
regardless of gender, race or religion.
s
Maintaining a favourable working environment such as the
provision of adequate leave for employees, providing child
care and maternity leave, so as to enable employees to meet
their family duties while performing their best on the job.
s
Respecting human rights including having in place grievance
redressal channels, sexual harassment complaint channels
and respect for each employee’s personal data and information.
s
Providing employees with equal opportunity to be considered
for training and development based on their strengths and
needs, to help them achieve their full potential.
s
Prioritising the occupational health and safety of our employees,
including external suppliers such as contractors.
RELIGARE HEALTH TRUST
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