Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies has proposed the removal of business rescue practitioners (BRPs) of the South African Post Office (SAPO), Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons, in a decisive move reflecting growing frustration over its precarious state.
The committee’s dissatisfaction stems from the duo’s failure to formulate a viable plan to restore the entity’s liquidity and solvency, leading to a substantial burden on taxpayers, as highlighted by committee chairperson Khusela Diko during a media briefing on integrated portfolio clusters on Thursday.
Diko said the committee had, after three meetings with the rescue practitioners, remained unconvinced by their ability to future-proof the State-Owned Entity and propose its sustainability.
She said the committee had resolved to approach Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, in a bid to lobby for their dismissal.
“While we acknowledge and recognise the work done by the BRPs to date, even though it is at an immense financial cost to the State, the committee holds a firm view that the BRPs should have and ought to have, in terms of their mandate, produced and presented a sustainable plan that will guarantee the Post Office returns to liquidity and solvency and also ensuring that it is future proofed,” Diko said.
“We remain unconvinced that the BRPs have done enough to secure strategic and meaningful partnerships in this regard. To this end, the committee will be engaging with the Minister to seek to understand the exit strategy of the BRPs.
“They cannot be there forever. During the course of its oversight work, we will also initiate stakeholder consultations with the private sector and other interested sectors on strategic partnerships for the Executive’s consideration in order to resuscitate and save the the Post Office.”
Diko also said the government must be deliberate in its support of the Post Bank and the SA Post Office.
The BRPs of the SAPO are looking for R3.8 billion to ensure that the struggling State-Owned Entity does not fold but the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, did not allocate any funding to the entity during the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement in October following a R2.4bn allocation in 2023.
“We continue to call on them to develop regulations to ring-fence certain categories and quantum of work for these institutions without compromising the required regulations to banking and public finance regulations,” Diko said.
She also said the Post Bank must be a primary platform for the government financial grant and loan instruments.
“Our role as the committee is to ensure that concrete plans in the forms of policy and legislation are in place, and conduct oversight on the implementation therefore,” she said.
“It is quite disappointing that you would have even MPs seeking to move SASSA grant payments away from the Post Bank. Seeing government itself not utilising the Post Office for the delivery of its goods. We must be intentional. If these institutions have to be strengthened, we have to ensure that the government itself is deliberate in using these services.”
Diko noted the progress made by the Post Bank to fully comply with the variation notice of the South African Reserve Bank, with 10 of the 11 conditions completed, as well as the process to licence the bank in due course and that the one outstanding item on the variation notice was the replacement of all gold SASSA cards to black cards.
In their update in September last year, BRPs said they had over the past year stabilized the business and made progress on cutting costs.
This they said included rescaling the business with about 4 875 people out of a total staff complement of 11 083 were retrenched through a Section 189 process, in consultation with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
The BRPs also said they were proactively and reactively considering mutually beneficial partnerships for the SAPO, in line with the Government of National Unity’s intentions to consider private partnerships.
BUSINESS REPORT