SAA BRPs defend their R30 million bill

SAA’s business rescue practitioners (BRPs) are defending their heavily criticised R30 million fees as it emerged that their counterparts, at another troubled state-owned airline, SA Express, gave up their R2000-an-hour remuneration for employees’ salaries.

Les Matuson and Siviwe Dongwana, the national carrier’s BRPs since December, have come under fire from chairperson of the National Assembly’s standing committee on public accounts Mkhuleko Hlengwa and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan after it emerged that they had earned R15m each for between three to four months, despite not delivering a plan to save the airline.

Hlengwa expressed his unhappiness with the BRPs’ fees, likening the process to a money-making scheme.

However, Matuson and Dongwana have defended their fees, saying their task required a supporting team of highly skilled professionals for a company of SAA’s size and complexity.

“The BRPs should therefore be assessed in the context of a team, rather than on an BRP individual basis. Every member of the BRP team and associated consultants maintains a detailed schedule of hours that have been expended on the assignment,” they said in communication to affected persons including creditors and workers this week.

Earlier this month, Dongwana told Parliament that their hourly rate was

regulated by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission.

According to the BRPs, given the complex legal issues that emanate from a business rescue process involving many different aspects of law, the support of legal advisers is key to ensuring both the integrity of the process in law as well as in responding to and resolving other legal challenges alongside the airline’s legal advisers.

Matuson and Dongwana’s spirited defence comes as SA Express’s BRPs Phahlani Mkhombo and Daniël Terblanche revealed that they forfeited their fees for employees’ salaries.

“The BRPs did not receive any payments from the company during the business rescue proceedings, but incurred substantial costs,” said Mkhombo and Terblanche.

They indicated that they could have drawn fees when funds were available during the business rescue process but they elected to allocate the funds to employees in lieu of salaries.

Next month, the airline would be back in the South Gauteng High Court, where affected parties will have to show cause why the company should not be placed under final liquidation.

SA Express was placed under provisional liquidation last month and the business rescue process was stopped at the request of Mkhombo and Terblanche.