Home

Mboweni awaiting progress report on SABC

Reading Time: 2 minutes

The Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is expecting a progress report on turning the SABC around later this month, as the finances of the public broadcaster remains in the spotlight.

This is according to Minister of Communications Nomvula Mokonyane, who on Thursday spoke during a ministerial oral reply session in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) in Parliament.

Mokonyane says the SABC Board should have halted plans of restructuring the public broadcaster in terms of Section 189.

“What has been agreed upon in government is that there should be a turnaround task team constituted by National Treasury, ourselves and the SABC should actually reflect on these matters so that  the board  of the SABC does not move fast  on applying 189 – which has also not been applied appropriately. Because there hasn’t been sufficient consultation. There hasn’t been sufficient skills audit. We definitely need a comprehensive turnaround and we will continue to work with this. Minister Tito Mboweni has agreed  also that in the  coming three weeks the team will have to come back to us and give us a progress report.”

READ: I’m not to blame for SABC woes- Motsoeneng

Mokonyane highlighted that the Communications Ministry never agreed with the SABC Board and management about the planned retrenchments at the public broadcaster.

The minister referred to the SABC’s failure to reach consensus with the unions representing its workers.

“ We keep reminding the SABC that you cannot go through Section 189 and announce publicly when your first consultation with labour actually collapsed. It did not even reach any consensus. So there is no consensus on the implementation. And  it is that intervention that we are making. And as the shareholder, we have not agreed with what the SABC is saying. And they have actually not started to comply with Section 189, hence the outcry that is coming from labour – the  two unions that are in existence in the SABC.

“We do hope that with this meeting that would be  taking place between  Treasury, ourselves and the Board of the SABC, we’ll be able to make the Board appreciate that you can’t pre-empt through the laying off of staff or threatening staff that  you are going to retrench before you develop a better vision or a future  plan of the SABC.”

Mokonyane reveals packages of SABC’s top 3 executives

Author

MOST READ