The Democratic Alliance (DA) Member of Parliament’s Communications Committee Dianne Kohler Barnard has criticised the SABC for not improving its financial status at the same speed as the implementation of its turnaround strategy.
The SABC board chairperson and executives appeared virtually before the Committee to brief it on the vetting of executives and progress on the implementation of the turnaround strategy.
The corporation says it has achieved 90 percent of the strategy.
Kohler-Barnard raised concerns when Committee members asked the delegations of the SABC and other state-owned entities.
“The implementation of its turnaround plan is at 90 percentage commendable percentage. So are the financials turning around with equal speed? I fear not. The reference in the presentation speaks to financial sustainability and governance, so perhaps irregular and wasteful expenditure is in hand and going down. But the finances. In slide five you admit that the financial sustainability initiatives have not yielded positive impact, so there is a net loss of R210 million as of the 30th of last month. So just how successful is the turnaround strategy in real terms.”
SABC Group CEO Madoda Mxakwe has told the Committee that there is context to the loss of more than R200-million which the public broadcaster has recorded recently.
Mxakwe was responding to questions from members of the committee about the SABC’s finances.
Mxakwe explains, ” The first question by honourable Gumbu in terms of the recorded financial losses of over R200-million, I think there needs to be context on this because the net losses for the previous fiscal is standing at R530-million. You may recall, one of the key tenets of the strategy was to make sure that we reduce the net losses year-on-year. So, this is in line with that.”
