by Thinus Ferreira
A whopping 621 SABC staffers have lost their jobs at South Africa's public broadcaster in the "extremely difficult" and "emotionally charged" retrenchment process at the bloated, over-staffed and financially struggling SABC, with the broadcaster that said that it has concluded its Section 189 retrenchment process.
Labour costs are the SABC's single biggest expense on the balance sheet.
The SABC started issuing notices for a section 189 process in June 2020 that will conclude on 31 March 2021 that will see hundreds of SABC staffers without jobs - including married people leaving households with children without any parents having jobs.
The SABC's TV channels are also left without any publicity people who used to issue TV schedules, programming and publicity images, schedule updates, programming information and who handled media enquiries.
Out of the 621 SABC staffers, 346 opted for voluntary severance packages. Some were concerned about the impact of lower job scale
codes resulting from the organisation-wide job evaluation process on their current
salaries and their pension.
These SABC staffers took voluntary severance packages.
The SABC says the other 275 employees are those who
occupied positions that have become redundant.
"The
retrenchment process has been extremely difficult for all stakeholders and
became emotionally charged at times," says Madoda Mxakwe, SABC CEO.
"The extended process unfortunately also
created prolonged uncertainty and a sense of despondency for many. This was
understandable and regrettable."
"However, despite these challenges, the section
189 process was a necessary component of the SABC's turnaround plan to ensure
the public broadcaster's long term financial sustainability and capacity to
fulfil its extensive public mandate."
Madoda Mxakwe says "The process was necessary to preserve and
reposition the SABC as a resilient and viable public broadcaster and public
media organisation.
"The SABC will continue to diligently serve the tens of millions of South
Africans who rely on it for education, sport, news and entertainment, in all
our languages."
"We remain committed to transforming the SABC and taking its
content everywhere, across platforms, on all devices and in all our languages.
We want to be part of preserving this national treasure which has the public
interest at the very heart of its existence."
