No sin for a black man to earn a decent salary - Hlaudi

Johannesburg - It was no sin for a black man to earn a decent salary, the SABC's chief operations officer, Hlaudi Motsoeneng said on Wednesday.

Motsoeneng said the SABC was willing to pay any employee who added value to the company.

He was speaking to reporters about his bump in salary to R3.7m.

"Anyone who is able to generate revenue for the SABC should be rewarded accordingly, even if those people are cleaners," Motsoeneng said.

It was understood that Motsoeneng received the salary hike following his promotion from acting COO.

The salary hike included a bonus of R279 000 and R916 000 in expenses and allowances. The SABC also contributed R369 000 to his pension and medical aid fund.

According to the DA, Motsoeneng had received almost a million rand increase from the R2.872m he received while in the acting COO position.

"The only problem can be if the SABC is paying Hlaudi more than what it is suppose to be paying. But there is a policy ... processes in place," Motsoeneng said, adding that he did not sign off on his own pay cheque or bonuses.

He said while his salary may be frowned upon, there were some members of the executive who earned more than he did.

"People have been misled. We need to be fair when reporting on matters within the organisation," he said.

Meanwhile, the public broadcaster reported a loss of R395 million during the last financial year.

Addressing a media conference at the SABC's Johannesburg premises, the public broadcaster's top brass said the losses were because of, among other things, load shedding, downsizing from advertisers and the failure of consumers to pay tv licenses.

Despite the losses, the SABC bosses said the station was "doing well" and had a "good story to tell" having secured more local content and taking on more skilled staff on permanent contracts.

While the auditor general had reported that the SABC lost R514 088 to wasteful and fruitless expenditure, the broadcaster's Chief Financial Officer James Aguma explained that stricter measures would be put in place to ensure that workers who contributed to this were brought to book. 

An auditing company had been hired to look into the SABC and was expected to deliver a report by March 31, 2016, Aguma said.

Despite the multi-million rand losses, the SABC said it closed the financial year with a cash balance of R1.017bn.

This article first appeared on News24 – here.