South Africa: SABC to cut jobs in bid to reduce costs

Cape Town— Job cuts are looming at the SABC as the new board and CEO Solly Mokoetle strive to slash costs and reduce the bloated head count of nearly 4000 employees.

The public broadcaster is appealing to the Department of Communications and Parliament’s communications committee to help it get the auditor-general to undertake a comprehensive forensic audit to clean up the rot in the organisation because it cannot pay for such an audit itself.

SABC deputy chairwoman Felleng Sekha told the committee yesterday that a forensic audit was necessary to determine the extent of the “malfeasance” within the organisation.

Details of the staff cutbacks are only expected to be finalised over the next six weeks.

They are necessary to reduce the wage bill, a requirement of the R1,47bn state guarantee as well as being a recommendation of the report handed to the new board by the interim board at the end of its term of office.

The SABC’s wage bill soared 15,3% in the 2008-09 financial year, mainly because of an increase in the head count.

The conditions of the guarantee require that the SABC submit a corporate plan to the Treasury by the end of next month.

SABC chairman Ben Ngubane told the committee that the board and executive management had been very busy in formulating a turnaround strategy to deal with the “financial crisis” at the SABC.

The strategy would aim to clean up corporate governance lapses, stabilise the organisation and begin a process of achieving financial sustainability next year.

The corporation reported a loss of R910m in the year to the end of March last year.

Mokoetle said a turnaround planning unit had been established in his office to address the dual failings of the SABC, namely the lack of capacity and corporate governance.

The introduction of a small core of leaders at the top was not sufficient to address the capacity crisis and outside expertise would be needed temporarily to help management with the restructuring.

A drive was under way to reorganise the sales and marketing unit as well as license fee collection to increase revenue as fast as possible, and to devise strategies to retain the broadcaster’s audiences.

A major reorganisation of internal structures was required.

Sekha said the board was satisfied that all actions suggested in an earlier Gobodo report on irregularities at the broadcaster had been addressed.

Newspaper reports that the Gobodo report had found Mokoetle guilty had failed to mention that Mokoetle had successfully challenged the finding in the Labour Court, which set it aside.

- February 24, 2010 by Linda Ensor

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Source: www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx (accessed on 25.02.2010)