Why does government keep bailing out SAA?

The carrier is draining our financial coffers and taxpayers’ money, writes Farouk Saloojee.

South African Airways (SAA) needs to be sold. SAA is draining our financial coffers and taxpayers’ money and there is no benefit to keeping the carrier afloat.

SAA has drained our budgets by R11 billion in the past few years.

Why keep something generating bad debt and continue putting in billions every now and then to keep it going?

Why is government bailing out SAA so often and for whose benefit? It’s not benefitting the country at all.

It needs to be privatised immediately. It’s not financially viable and it’s a burden to our already overburdened country.

All these billions could be better spent on improving service delivery or for industrialising rural areas and skill upliftment programmes which are a must for the millions of unemployed youth.

Furthermore, most SOEs are overstaffed, overpaid and are big fat milking cows for looters.

There are no controls, no systems in place.

They are digging big holes in taxpayers’ pockets.