DA submits PAIA and parliamentary questions regarding SABC top management salaries

Note to Editors: Please find attached a soundbite in English by DA Shadow Minister of Communications, Phumzile Van Damme MP.

The DA will not let the matter of the SABC’s top management’s alleged reduced salaries rest.

The public has a right to know, and fight for that right to know we shall.

We have today submitted a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) application to the SABC requesting the full salary packages of the public broadcaster’s GCEO, COO and CFO.

PAIA aims to to promote transparency, accountability and effective governance of all public bodies, like the SABC. The grounds for refusal of information in the Act do not apply to the SABC in this instance. We trust that the public broadcaster’s management will reveal the requested information in the spirit of promotion of transparency, accountability and effective governance at the SABC, as they often proclaim to be adherents of.

We have also submitted parliamentary questions to the Minister of Communications, Nomvula Mokonyane requesting full details of the salary packages of the GCEO, COO and CFO, including information regarding the process followed in their employment.

Mokonyane has an obligation in terms of the Rules of Parliament to respond in writing within ten working days. We look forward to a written reply which will provide full details of the information requested.

The SABC is currently facing a serious financial crisis – it has been declared by the Auditor-General to be commercially insolvent. Instead of taking the public into confidence regarding all measures that it will be taking to turn the SABC to calm waters, and how it has, as it claims, contributed to reducing the SABC’s R3.1 billion salary bill, management is choosing to place a veil of secrecy on their own salaries. This at the same time is considering retrenching a bloated middle management staff component and indeed junior staff.

The DA will not stop until the information is made public and will use all mechanisms available to us to provide this information to the public.

Statement issued by Phumzile Van Damme MP, DA Shadow Minister of Communications, 5 October 2018