Minister rewards poor performing SAPO Board Members with new term
21 April 2023
“It is untenable and simply mind boggling, that the Minister can look at the woeful state of SAPO and find it fitting to reappoint not only the current members of the board, but the very Chairperson who should have been steering the ship all along.”
This week the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele, not only stated in no uncertain terms that Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service would not be welcome in South Africa, unless 30% of Space X’s equity was owned by previously disadvantaged groups, but has now seen fit to reappoint the chairperson and three other board members of the South African Post Office SOC Ltd (SAPO) for another term.
SAPO was provisionally liquidated on 9 February 2023 after failing to pay one of its many creditors. It is alleged that SAPO owes a total of R4.4 billion to various creditors, including its own employees for medical aid benefits and pension contributions.
The DA was told this morning that the case lodged with the Hawks against the Management of SAPO who had fraudulently taken hundreds of millions of rands of medical aid and pension contributions from salaries, and then not paid it over to Medipos and the pension fund, is at an advanced stage.