Parliament on crisis at SABC

SCOPA emphasises that political leaders can do more to assist with the crisis at SABC

The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) would like to emphasise that the political leadership within the Department of Communications can and should do more to assist with the crisis at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).

The committee is of the view that the public broadcaster should be creative enough to find ways of avoiding “day zero”, when it comes to retrenchments. As a public broadcaster, Scopa hopes that the SABC can save all jobs and find solutions to the retrenchments, so that the anxiety that everyone is feeling can pass.

After hearing that the SABC has not recovered any of the money it lost due to irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, Scopa told the SABC to begin recovering these funds. Scopa is particularly concerned about this, as the SABC is considering retrenching almost half its staff, both permanent and freelance employees.

Scopa requested the SABC to furnish it with all the names of those that signed off on the contracts that led to the irregular expenditure of R4.9bn. Scopa also raised the issue of standardisation across all SABC’s platforms and requested the public broadcaster to provide a schedule of the salaries of all TV and radio show anchors. Scopa has also requested monthly reports from the SABC on irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

Scopa is also concerned with fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounting to R54m and called for consequence management for those at fault. Deviations made without National Treasury approval are another big concern.

For media enquiries, please contact the committee’s Media Officer:
Faith Ndenze
Tel: 021 403 8062
Cell: 081 377 0686
E-mail: fndenze@parliament.gov.za

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