CAPE TOWN – South African Airways (SAA) executives returned to Parliament on Wednesday to brief public finance watchdog Scopa on its state of affairs.
The meeting was joined by the Public Enterprises committee members, Minister Pravin Gordhan as well as the airline’s business rescue practitioners.
After Eskom officials faced a grilling on Tuesday by MPs, next up was SAA, another state-owned company which was in deep trouble.
Gordhan said that the national carrier had the undesirable honour of being the first SOE to be placed into business rescue.
He said that business rescue practitioners were still putting together a plan to turn around the airline to avoid liquidating the company, which could lead to job losses.
“I also said there was better value to be obtained for the assets that we have under the restructured options and business rescue than liquidation. The liquidation has all the catastrophes.”
Public Enterprises acting director-general Kgathatso Tlhakudi added that SAA was facing a plethora of challenges.
“SAA has been facing a plethora of challenges, both operational and financial challenges, and there were interventions that we made to address the challenges SAA was going through.”