The SABC has told staffers at the beleaguered South African public broadcaster that it is undeterred and "remains on course" with its retrenchment process to downsize its ballooning wage bill.
On Tuesday Jonathan Thekiso, the SABC's head of human resources, in an internal SABC memo to staffers at the cash-strapped broadcaster, told staffers the SABC's board and top executives remain committed on following the retrenchment plan that was started.
"In line with our commitment of ensuring transparency, please note that this process remains on course, as approved by the board," Jonathan Thekiso told SABC personnel.
"Since we announced that the SABC contemplates implementing section 189 of the Labour Relations Act, there have been many confusing messages emanating from various stakeholders on this process," Jonathan Thekiso told SABC staffers, and noted that the SABC will "keep all employees fully informed of any developments in this matter".
There's been a chorus of criticism over the SABC's plan to fire hundreds of workers.
Nomvula Mokonyane, South Africa's minister of communications, on Monday slammed the SABC top executives for their turn-around plan to fire hundreds of staffers, saying she and the ministry of communications are opposed to the SABC's retrenchment plan that includes shutting down provincial offices and reducing provincial SABC staffers.
The South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) that also weighed in this week and likewise slammed the SABC's "cruelty", saying SABC staffers are "once again,at the receiving end of leadership abuse and negligence" at the broadcaster.
Madoda Mxakwe, SABC CEO has warned 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.
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 and that although it is a R7.2 billion revenue generating company, it's saddled with a massive annual salary bill of R3.1 billion.
