Admin
19 Apr, 2020
UDM calls for urgent meeting of Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee to discuss SAA
Early in February 2020, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan briefed the Portfolio Committee of Public Enterprises and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on the December 2019 decision to put South African Airways (SAA) under business rescue. A decision was then taken that the business rescue practitioners (BRPs) were to table their business rescue plan to these Committees by March 2020. This did not happen due to the Covid-19 lockdown. As we now know, the initial R5.5 billion government had provided to sustain the business rescue process has been spent and Minister Gordhan has apparently refused the additional R10 billion the BRPs have asked for to cover the costs of resuscitating SAA post-lockdown. The BRPs have already asked, and received, three extensions of the deadline to publish their business rescue plan. Why are they dawdling and missing their deadlines? At the rate they are going one wonders whether they plan to rescue the airline or whether they have a mandate from some quarters to destroy it. The United Democratic Movement (UDM) is of the view that SAA’s BRPs have been running roughshod over the process and the fact that the Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee has not been meeting due to the Covid-19 lockdown, means that no oversight is taking place. This is serious cause for concern. We now hear that SAA is offering severance packages to its approximately 5,000 employees, a proposal the BRPs have come up with after government indicated that it is broke. This threat of job losses is a move on the BRPs’ part to blackmail government, and therefore the taxpayer. From the UDM’s point of view, those who have looted SAA with impunity during state capture must be brought to book, because if the stolen monies were paid back where it belonged, it could have been used as a resource to avoid retrenchments. SAA’s thousands of workers should not be made to suffer because of a few greedy individuals who have appropriated public funds for private use. For the UDM, the key issue is that business rescue must be dealt with comprehensively and not in the piecemeal fashion we have been witnessing. For instance, the nation had been informed that SAA planned to sell assets to fund the proposed retrenchment process, but one wonders at the move to do so before there is a rescue plan in place? It is critical that the Minister of Public Enterprises tables the rescue plan before the Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee and that he explains the circumstances around SAA so that pertinent questions may be answered. Another matter that the Minister needs to explain and discuss with the Committee is that SAA, like other state-owned enterprises, is top heavy. The UDM therefore believes it is critical that this Committee should urgently meet in a virtual setting to receive the Minister’s report and to discuss SAA’s situation and the so-called rescue plan. Issued by: Mr Nqabayomzi Kwankwa, MP UDM Deputy-President and Chief Whip in the National Assembly Member of the Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee
Admin
17 Jul, 2014
Budget Vote 11: Public Enterprises
Address by UDM Deputy Secretary General, Mr Nqabayomzi Kwankwa, MP at Committee Room E249 Chairperson, Honourable Minister and Deputy Minister, Honourable Members, For many years, South Africa’s economic growth potential has been shackled by a lack of properly planned infrastructure investment. This resulted in immense disparities in the quality of the infrastructure between rural and urban communities. The poor and rural communities have to make do with inadequate and poor quality infrastructure, which confines them to the margins of economic activity. Through properly planned infrastructure development and rural development programmes, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have an important role to play to boost economic growth in order to ensure equal opportunity for all people to participate in our country’s economy. However, this objective will be difficult to achieve if drastic steps are not taken to improve the capacity of SOEs to spend their allocated budgets. For instance, over the past two years, SOEs have been spending approximately 70 per cent of the funds committed to infrastructure development. To make matters worse, SOE managers also achieve approximately 70 per cent of their performance agreements. These factors together with the number of times Government has had to bailout some of the SOEs reveals that SOEs are far less productive than private sector companies. How does one then justify the high salaries paid to the executives of the SOEs? The United Democratic Movement (UDM) believes capacity levels at SOEs need to be improved if they (SOEs) are to truly serve as an engine for economic growth and development. We are also of the view that steps should be taken to ensure that the right people are employed into right positions at our SOEs, with clear and strict performance contracts. We believe that in large infrastructure development programmes, the Department needs to rope in the private sector to either invest in or play a part in them. Honourable Minister, We were too happy to hear that the Department has reduced its vacancy rate from 16.7 per cent in 2009 to 11.9 per cent 2013. However, our celebration was short-lived, when we discovered that the use of consultants features prominently in the plans of the Department for the current financial year. We believe that filling vacancies should result in lower usage of consultants, and not the opposite. The UDM supports Budget Vote 11. I thank you.
