Madoda Mxakwe, SABC CEO is warning staffers about the South African public broadcaster's "dire financial state" after the SABC started the process of job cuts and retrenchments to downsize the SABC's staff numbers.
A week after the SABC chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini played coy, didn't want to talk about SABC staff firings and wasn't willing to be upfront about the SABC that has been looking at drastically shedding another 800 jobs, Madoda Mxakwe finally told SABC staffers following a meeting on Thursday with trade unions, that the SABC's wage bill is unsustainable.
Madoda Mxakwe spoke to SABC staffers on Friday, 14 September, and "communicated the fire financial state that the SABC finds itself in", the SABC says in a statement.
"He explained that the SABC had a demanding financial year with total revenue of R6.6 billion against a budget of R7.3 billion resulting in an under-performance of R709 million (10%).
The SABC posted a loss of R622 million for the 2017/2018 financial year with the country's Auditor-General (AG), Kimi Makwetu, saying he can't determine whether the cash-strapped South African public broadcaster remains a going concern.
Longtime staffers and producers who have been with SABC News since the channel's start-up five years ago already got axed at the end of August although despite the SABC renewed its controversial multi-million rand channel carriage carriage with Naspers' MultiChoice to continue carrying the news channel on DStv for the next few years.
Around 3 000 of the SABC's staff headcount are permanent employees, while the rest are fixed-term and freelance workers.
A staggering amount of the SABC's expenditure goes to just paying staffers, although just 60% are directly involved in programming. The SABC is supposed to spend the bulk of its money on creating and broadcasting content.
The SABC says "one of the SABC's biggest cost drivers is the salary bill. The put this into context, the SABC is a R7.2 billion revenue generating company with a salary bill of R3.1 billion. The current ratio of revenue to wage bill is not sustainable given the SABC's dismal financial situation," says Neo Momodu, SABC spokesperson in the statement.
"It is for this reason that the SABC is contemplating other cost cutting measures to further reduce costs. The next step is for the SABC to engage in joint consensus seeking consultations with organised labour."
