Following a commitment by the Minister of Communications, General (Ret) Siphiwe Nyanda during his budget vote speech to put in place mechanisms that would ensure a turn around of the situation at the Public Broadcaster, SABC and Sentech, a team of industry experts and labour has since begun work to meet this obligation.
Several meetings were held between the department, the SABC and Sentech to look into challenges faced by the two organisations. A 12 member team was subsequently appointed.
Working with the interim board of the SABC and its management and the Sentech board and its management, the turn around team's mandate is, among other things,
* To give advice to the minister and the department of communications on strategies required to ensure that the public broadcaster achieves its constitutional mandate of providing quality and reliable public broadcasting services to the public.
* Advise the minister on the optimum funding model for the public broadcaster's public and commercial broadcasting services.
* Conduct a review of the SABC's human resource needs.
* Advice on whether the current business model between the SABC and Sentech should remain as is.
* Review the Business Plans of both the SABC and Sentech and advice accordingly in light of developments in the ICT sector and legislation governing the two entities.
It is also important to note that the above process is being carried out simultaneously with a forensic audit being conducted by the Auditor-General's office based on recommendations by Parliament.
The interim board of the SABC is expected to serve for a period no longer than three months and focus primarily on short term interventions to address the challenges faced by the SABC, i.e. the filling of vacant executive positions, governance, financial management and general operations at the corporation.
Parliament has since issued an invitation to the public to nominate individuals to serve on the board of the Public broadcaster.
While on the other hand, the Task Team seeks to devise long and short term strategies and interventions that would see the SABC return to a healthy financial state. The task team will work closely with the SABC interim board to ensure a smooth and thorough process.
The team is expected to report back to the minister periodically and will submit a final report at the end of October.
For more information please contact:
Tiyani Rikhotso
Cell: 083 800 9936
Issued by: Department of Communications
27 July 2009
Source: SAPA
