ESTVA APPLIES FOR E200M BAILOUT FROM GOVT

LOBAMBA – Sinking in debt.

This is the sad reality for Eswatini Television Authority (ESTVA), which has since applied for a bailout amounting to E200 million from government to pay off its debts. So much are the debts that the state-owned TV station has had to stop renting vehicles as a cost-cutting measure despite that those available are inadequate and present difficulties, particularly for reporters, to go to destined areas to gather news. The E200 million bailout was announced by newly-appointed Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Andreas Dlamini during the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology’s (ICT) appearance before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in Parliament yesterday.

Unremitted

The bailout will service such debts as the unremitted taxes amounting to over E115 million as detailed by Dlamini, unremitted pension deductions amounting to E20 million and long outstanding creditors (unpaid suppliers) which is between E18 to E20 million, among other debts. The Auditor General, Timothy Matsebula, through the compliance audit report, revealed that there were material uncertainties which threatened the ability of the TV station to continue delivering services to the public and achieve its mandate. Matsebula submitted that the indications of existence of material uncertainties included a cumulative loss of E115.6 million, a negative equity investment balance of E108 million, an employee costs exceeded the total income received by the authority by E567 585.

It also includes an employee pension liability of E17.5 million, trade payables of E116.4 million, current liabilities exceeded current assets by E94.2 million, unremitted taxes amounting to E82 759 507 to the Eswatini Revenue Service and liabilities exceeded assets by E108 million. Chairman of the PAC and Gege Member of Parliament (MP) Musa Kunene said it had taken too long for the TV station to react to this crisis because it was nothing new but the previous management was pretending as though all was going well. He said there were individuals in the previous management who did not want to be advised and he made an example about the Parliament select committee that was deployed to probe the operations of the TV station and make recommendations.

Exposed

Kunene said instead of picking from the report and implementing the recommendations, the management or certain individuals opted to go to court to stop the implementation of the recommendations made in the report, which was an indication that there was a lot of rot that these individuals did not want to be exposed. However, the committee was of the view that the newly-appointed acting CEO should be given the benefit of the doubt together with his executive team and they expected to see positive change at least in the next six months.  One of the items that the committee members want to see change on is the expansion of coverage of the TV station to reach the whole country as some places, especially in the rural areas, were still not getting the service. This issue was an obvious thorn in the flesh for Mangcongco MP Oneboy Zikalala, who put it to the CEO and his executive team to see to it that the station did not only expand its coverage but made the programmes more appealing to its audience, instead of playing content that was relevant to the previous generation.

Another issue that made the discussions was that of paying of TV licences, which the committee felt would partially help the situation if implemented correctly. The suggestion was that there should be functionality in the TV box known as Sigujana or the TV itself, which will automatically switch off when one had not paid their TV licence because collecting the TV licence money manually had proved a failure.

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