The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has drafted and sent a proposal to increases TV licences fees to communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams.<\/p>\n
This is according to DA shadow minister of communications, Phumzile Van Damme, citing a parliamentary meeting on Wednesday (28 August).<\/p>\n
While it was not specified how much fees would increase by, Van Damme said that the DA is opposed to any additional taxation of already over-burdened South African taxpayers.<\/p>\n
“We call on the public broadcaster to find new revenue streams to stay afloat instead of imposing increases to TV licence fees” she said.<\/p>\n
“The SABC needs to find innovative measures to strengthen their collection of revenue as poor South Africans will, without doubt, be unlikely to afford increased licence fees.”<\/p>\n
The current annual TV licence fee is R265 a year. South Africans are required by law to pay for a TV licence if they wish to use devices which can function as a television.<\/p>\n
This includes second-hand TVs, as they are still capable of receiving a broadcast television signal, which is the definition of a television set in section 27 of the Broadcasting Act 4 of 1999.<\/p>\n
Financial trouble<\/strong><\/p>\n In the same meeting, SABC Group chief financial officer Yolande van Biljon said that the broadcaster is technically insolvent and is struggling to honour payments to service providers and contractual obligations.<\/p>\n Some suppliers who have won bids at the SABC have indicated their unwillingness to take up the contracts due to their financial dire straits, she said.<\/p>\n There are instances where the broadcaster is unable to honour payments and even [unable] to adhere to committed contracts, “which means we often need to renegotiate because we have been unable to meet the requirements,” van Biljon said.<\/p>\n \u201cCurrently, the organisation is technically insolvent. We are also under tremendous strain towards being factually insolvent as a result of our liquidity issues. Cash is depleted and the trade and other payables amount to R1.8 billion as at June 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a number of significant suppliers that make this up, notably Sentech (R554 million), our signal distribution provider; Supersport, Samro and various other content providers (amount to R174 million). We have monthly engagements with all these parties,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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