The SABC is losing between R80 million and R90 million monthly, with South Africa's public broadcaster that last week told parliament that the embattled broadcaster doesn't have enough money to spend on content while the wage bill is almost double what it spends on content.
The SABC’s expenditure currently far outstrips what the struggling SABC makes in revenue and it is getting worse as its wage bill of R3.1 billion means that 42% of it R.7.3 billion expenditure just goes to paying staffers.
Furthermore the SABC's R3.1 billion spent to pay its 3 478 staffers pales in comparison to the measly R1.7 billion the broadcaster spends on programme, film and sports rights - in other words creating and acquiring content.
The SABC told parliament that the ballooning staff costs over the past few years is the result of higher than inflation salary increases, unauthorised promotions of employees from administration positions to management, and a disregard for policies and processes.
The SABC says its spending so much on staff costs and other expenses that it doesn't have enough money to spend on content to try and lure back audiences.
The SABC told parliament that it's currently losing between R80 million and R90 million per month, while expected revenues are decreasing by 10%.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) political party's member of parliament, Phumzile Van Damme, on Tuesday in a statement called on the broadcaster "to play open cards with the public" and called on the "SABC to reveal its top management salaries from CEO down to group executives".
"This is not confidential information, as the SABC is a public institution and their salaries are a matter of public record."
"In order to ease concerns that the upper echelons of the SABC continue to live the high life, while staff face the possibility of retrenchment, the SABC must reveal the salaries for public scrutiny and to confirm that austerity measures do apply across the SABC," said Phumzile Van Damme.
"We trust that the SABC will, in the public interest, reveal this information."
The SABC in a statement on Monday said that "the salaries of the recently appointed SABC board members and executive management have been significantly reduced and bear no resemblance to the figures quotes in the DA statement" for the SABC to please say what the salaries of the board and executives are now.
TVwithThinus in response to the SABC that brought it up in its statement, asked what the salaries of the SABC board and executives are now.
The SABC didn't respond.
