Readers’Views
Badly run Edcon not worth a bailout to keep it afloat
I say let Edcon sink, “Let’s hope Edgars can be saved” (Readers’ Views, February 3). Nothing like flushing more Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) funds down the toilet. After all, it’s a little easier than taking private pension money.
If GEPF gives the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) the go-ahead, the PIC safe would consist of even more recipient IOUs.
Are you really going to miss those arrogant, badly run and overstaffed businesses should they go under?
Nathan Cheiman tried to differentiate Eskom from Edcon, but, on a scaled-down size, its demise is a result of poor financial decisions and dirty tricks to extort money from its account-holding customers (such as imposing insurance on card balances and introducing a monthly card fee without telling its customers).
Does the government intend to keep bailing out every business it deems too big to fail? Government unfriendly policies towards businesses, the current labour laws and bailouts are just some of the reasons we are in such a mess and encourage corruption in all spheres. Badly run behemoths keep extorting bailouts because of the threat made on government regarding the number of voters that businesses would have to let go — in Edcon’s case 40,000.
Just imagine how difficult it would be for the DA to govern after the ANC has been in power for 25 years. Do you think all the government employees that loyally serve the ANC would support the DA’s new-dawn policies, or would they all start an underground resistance campaign to ensure the DA failed on its promises to its electorate?
The same applies in trying to turn around Edcon or a state-owned enterprise. You need much more than a few managers and some bailout money to turn Edcon around.
South Africans would be far better off letting Edcon bite the dust. It’s better to take austerity measures on the chin than to prop up unsustainable businesses. You’d be surprised at the competent businesses that will step up to the plate in no time, operating efficiently and profitably, all without government handouts.
Gerry Nelson, Durban North
More like mossies
Well done, Hawks. You arrest Angelo Agrizzi after he has done all your work. You sat on the report from 2009, and only when the voting public were fully informed did you act on it.
How many other reports are you hiding? What for, I ask? Blackmail, political power, leverage for further looting, protecting Jacob Zuma and his fewer mates every day?
This proves how useless you are — mossies, more like it.
Dermot Quinn, on businesslive
Warped sense of entitlement
The column “Balance between CEO and worker pay needed” (February 3) refers. Greed knows few bounds. Most public company CEOs are simply professional managers and not entrepreneurs, but they suffer a warped sense of entitlement.
Such is human nature.
So why do nonexecutive directors not do their jobs — and this includes the managers of large pension funds?
They need to toughen up and have the moral fortitude to do the right thing.
Bruce Ravenhill , on businesslive