Deputy Speaker, the NFP notes the Budget Review and Recommendation Report, BRRR, on Public
Enterprises tabled here today. The NFP will support the report tabled here today.
Allow me to express our disappointment on some of these entities like Safcol and SA Airways for not even being able to provide an annual report for the 2018-20019 financial year.
Let me start off by addressing the issue of the SA Airways and I think as the NFP we have previously asked what the reason was that when it comes to the state-owned entities, they can not be profitable and yet when they are in private hands they are profitable.
And I think from the response you have now what is clear is that there has been political interference in the way we appoint these boards and cadre deployment and these are the things that have brought us to where we are in terms of the state-owned entities.
And it is for that reason, I want to plead with everybody today, as a result of the interference by Members of
Parliament, the government in state-owned entities, we are where we are.
Let us leave the Amabhokobhoko who are in Japan alone to do their business without any interference so that they can bring the cup home on Saturday afternoon.
Let me talk about the issue of Eskom, you know, year in and year out, we are asked to bail out Eskom. Again we have a management problem with Eskom but more importantly, while you are putting money into Eskom. Eskom is owed billions of rand and that money is not coming into it.
So I think it is time that we address the issues of the debt to Eskom that are not paid by government departments particularly the municipalities and we need to deal with that.
SA Express has a serious problem, wanting more aircraft, do not have the money. And what happens at the end of the day, the passengers on those flights are now being put on to Comair and FlySafair. Now really it does not make
sense having our own airline but making use of other airlines. The NFP will support this.