Minister confirms SABC to get state bailout

COMMUNICATIONS Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams has confirmed the SABC will get a bailout from the government after facing a cash crisis for two years.

Ndabeni-Abrahams said yesterday the bailout will be received in the next few months after the SABC has finalised its turnaround plan and other requirements of the National Treasury.

She said that what Finance Minister Tito Mboweni told Parliament in his Budget speech last week that there will be a guarantee with strict conditions attached to the bailout was correct.

Mboweni said there will be a guarantee of R6.8 billion for the SABC.

However, he said they had set new tough conditions for state-owned entities to receive guarantees and this includes the fact that the government will appoint a chief reorganisation officer to oversee the operations and business framework of the entity.

This was being done at Eskom after it was given a cash injection of R23bn a year. The government will appoint a chief reorganisation officer to be its eyes and ears at Eskom.

Ndabeni-Abraham said they had asked for more time to finalise their work before submitting it to the National Treasury to get the bailout.

“We have requested the National Treasury to give us time to finalise whatever we wanted to finalise. We have engaged staff members at the SABC… no one is panicking.

“The workers are not uncertain about their future. As a government we are assisting the SABC,” said Ndabeni-Abrahams.

The explanation by the minister came after the portfolio committee on communications yesterday failed to proceed with plans to shortlist 24 candidates to be interviewed for the SABC board positions.

This was after both the ANC and EFF initially wanted to set aside the process until after the elections.

The ANC wanted to put an interim board and conduct an inquiry into the remaining four members of the board.

But the DA said there was no legal ground for the inquiry into the remaining board members. It was eventually agreed that the proposal by the EFF to conduct exit interviews for the former board members will be done next week.

The remaining four board members cannot convene meetings at the SABC because they do not form a quorum.

This follows the resignation of eight other former members of the board.

However, next week all former board members and the remaining board members will be in Parliament for exit interviews. This will help MPs to understand the depth of the problems at the SABC.

After the exit interviews the committee will then start shortlisting the candidates for the permanent board.