BREAKING. SABC tells parliament it's on 'a positive roll'; ready to retrench staff with voluntary packages and early retirement.

Dr Ben Ngubane, chairperson of the SABC board told parliament's portfolio committee on communications that the South African public broadcaster ''is on a positive roll'' and that the SABC is going to retrench a lot of workers, starting with voluntary retrenchments and giving SABC staff early retirement options.

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Dr Ben Ngubane told the committee that the SABC was overstaffed and had too many workers.

''The overheads at the SABC are still unacceptably high,'' said dr Ben Ngubane. ''One of the key drivers is head count. We have to reduce headcount. Headcount had ballooned incredibly high before 2009.''

The SABC told the portfolio committee that the broadcaster will need government assistance in the form of money to be able to pay retrenchment and severance packages for voluntary resignations as well as early retirement.

''We need support, we will have to reduce the number of people at the SABC,'' dr Ben Ngubane said. ''We will need to use whatever cash resources and the pension fund to promote voluntary severance packages and early retirements. Even that will not be enough and government will need to step into the breach to help with retrenchment packages,'' he said.

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