SABC\u00a0acting CEO James Aguma has admitted to Parliament that the\u00a0public broadcaster has written off almost R18\u00a0billion in outstanding SABC TV licence fees – and the group isn’t really sure who in South Africa has a licence or not.<\/p>\n
According to Media24<\/a><\/strong>, Aguma told the\u00a0Parliamentary portfolio committee on communication that the SABC has been cleaning up its records and working on its database, but had to bring in consultants because the company did not have the requisite skills to accomplish that.<\/p>\n The\u00a0consultants discovered that, of the R23.8\u00a0billion the TV licence database was worth, about 1 million accounts adding up to R4\u00a0billion were either people who shouldn\u2019t have been added as licence holders or were deceased.<\/p>\n \u201cThat meant that even the notices that were being sent to people, were not accurate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n After cleaning up the database, the value dropped from R23.8 billion to R6.1 billion – a R17.7 billion write-off.<\/p>\n Before the clean-up, licence fees accounted for R12.2 billion, with penalties accounting for the other R11.6 billion. Some of these penalties had prescribed, belonged to the dead, or were owed by foreign nationals.<\/p>\n The\u00a0acting CEO admitted that hundreds of thousands of\u00a0accounts were found to be invalid\u00a0– with the consultants informing the SABC that it would need to write-off a million accounts.<\/p>\n According to Aguma, the public backlash against payment notifications has been “aggressive”, with many licence holders or subscribers using expletives to tell the broadcaster where it ‘can see itself off’.<\/p>\n The executive said the SABC would work hard to turn the negative into a positive story, and with a fresh database would work on proper accounting practices.<\/p>\n The admissions from the public broadcaster confirm the long-held and long-complained about dead-ends many consumers have faced trying to cancel a TV licence in South Africa<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
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