The SABC has lifted the lid on its TV licence collection shambles, telling parliament that it "cleaned up the database", wrote off a staggering R17.7 billion in TV licence fees and that South Africans are sending the SABC expletives telling the broadcaster to "Go …"
The SABC's acting CEO James Aguma revealed
that the SABC has written off over R17.7 billion in outstanding SABC TV licence
fees.
This staggering write-off comes after the
SABC started to try and clean up its records in which it listed dead people, kept
demanding exorbitant amounts from people who simply can't pay like old grannies,
and even issued licences to people living elsewhere in Africa.
James Aguma told parliament's portfolio committee
on communications that the SABC has been "cleaning up the database" since the
SABC had no idea who in the country are actually legitimate SABC TV licence
holders and who not.
"I took a look at the database. We also had
to get in consultants because we didn't have the capacity to do that," said
James Aguma.
"They discover that of the R23.8 billion the
[SABC TV licence] database was worth, about 1 million accounts adding up to R4
billion were either people who shouldn't have been added as licence holders,
deceased people and so on. So we cleaned up that database.”
"That meant that even the notices that were
being sent to people, were not accurate.” Aguma said he was told that "you are
still billing my dead relative". "We cleaned up that database and the figures
dropped from R23.8 billion to R6.1 billion".
Aguma said "400 000 accounts were
invalid". "We're saying: How does that happen? Either people were too lazy or
too negligent to do that job".
He said "SABC licence fees before the amount
was 'cleaned' R12.2 billion. Penalties was R11.6 billion. Bringing the total to
R23.8 billion. Now this is from a database that has no integrity."
"So we got a firm to go look at it, they then
went in and told us that if you want to clean up that data then you have to
write-off 1 million accounts. Some had prescribed, some were deceased, some are
foreign nationals."
"Someone from Malawi comes in and buys a TV
set and you say he owes you a licence but he doesn't even stay here. So all
that was listed in the database. So we are sitting with an amount of R6.1
billion."
Grannies owing
thousands in SABC licence fees
"Certain grannies had R15 000 owing – R9
000 in licences, R6 000 in penalties," said James Aguma. "How do you do
that? It just didn't make sense. We asked the department [of communications] to
write it off."
"We also noticed that in sending out the
notices to the public to pay, it was annoying. People would have married and
then we're sending them individual notices."
People also couldn't even pay in installments, said James Aguma.
"The response from the public then was very
aggressive. They would use expletives, telling us to 'Go elsewhere and so on'.
But we have cleaned that up and changed the approach."
"We said instead of sending negative
messages, lets send positive messages," said James Aguma.
He says the SABC is now putting in place
rewards like online bursaries and airtime for people who pay their SABC TV
licence.
"If you have a corrupt database, you're not
answering people's telephone calls, you're sending them accounts for deceased
people, then there's a problem. It causes a negative story," said James Aguma.
"The issue here is accounting correctly and
changing the mindset of the people. That negative perception needs to be dealt
with."
