In a shocking, cringe-inducing report-back appearance, the SABC is again appearing before parliament today, and again the beleaguered South African public broadcaster is begging for more money!
This as the National Treasury and the monitoring task team are finding that the SABC is not meeting its target guarantees, don't have plans (and in some case budgets) on anything ranging from digital terrestrial television (DTT), new news and sports channels and that the SABC is simply not complying with several requirements of the loan guarantee the government gave the struggling broadcaster two years ago.
While a stinging and embarrassing list of cringeworthy new failures are heaped onto the SABC by the National Treasury that forms part of the Monitoring Task Team looking at the SABC, the SABC board chairperson dr Ben Ngubane is asking for money. Dr Ben Ngubane told the committee that money is needed to pay for the massive lay-offs the SABC is planning for the SABC.
The National Treasury says it seems as if the SABC is making short term savings through cutbacks on content and that the SABC is not complying with several key requirements of the loan guarantee that effectively created the bail-out the SABC got two years ago from government.
The National Treasury says the SABC has not submitted proper budgets, that there is a major mismatch between executive performance agreements and the SABC's turnaround strategy and that it was difficult initially to get any information out of the SABC. The National Treasury says SABC management was not honest and not open. The National Treasury says there's no business plans for the SABC's DTT strategy, or new sport and news channels and that ''proper budgets have not been sumbitted''.
Meanwhile the struggling public broadcaster wants more money with the acting group CEO, Phil Molefe telling parliament that the SABC is ''in the stabilization phase'' - a phase it should have been in long ago and should have surpassed a long time ago. Dr Ben Ngubane says the SABC needs more money and blames the interim SABC board saying they didn't ''take into account the harsh realities of 2011''.
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