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
10 Feb, 2020
Dissent voices on SOEs by top leadership is disheartening!
The United Democratic Movement takes note on contradicting statements issued over the weekend by the President of the ruling party and his National Person on the ailing state-owned entity the South African airways. The President, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that SAA will not be sold or shut down and within hours the chairperson, Mr Gwede Mantashe told the nation that this entity should be shut down if it does not make profit. The ANC recently had a lekgotla, and they had promised the nation that the issue at SAA was going to be discussed, but from these statements one may conclude that there was no discussion, if there was, no agreement was reached as to how this important would be made viable. If it is like this at SAA, what about the other SOE’s? Seemingly the ruling party does not have a strategy to make these SOE’s to operate as companies that sustain themselves. The ANC is in the about what needs to be done to save these SOEs. This might be the reason why the rescuing practitioners of SAA are now dictating terms on how the entity should operate hence certain domestic and international routes had to be abruptly stopped without the approval government. This has turned South Africa a banana republic. The State Owned Enterprises need a decisive leadership and intervention not what it is being heard, that is, dissenting voices of the senior leaders of the ruling party and the government. The majority if not all SOEs are currently in the Intensive-care unit (ICU), they are not making any profit. These SOEs are supposed to be contributing to the GDP of the country yet they are a liability. This is a biggest shame. How long will the hard-earned money of taxpayer’s money keep saving these SOEs? The problem with ruling party is for it to admit that cadre deployment is killing these SOEs and it is afraid to take drastic actions as it does not want to lose support from their comrades who are somehow being compensated for failing to make it to parliament or provincial legislatures. This must stop if South Africa is be made a winning nation. Issued by: Bongani Msomi UDM Secretary General
