DA to file PAIA on Motsoeneng's salary increase

04 February 2016

The DA will submit a PAIA (Promotion of Access to Information Act) application to request the SABC’s record of decision on COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s R912 000 salary increase last year. 

This comes after Communications Minister, Faith Muthambi, refused to make public the record of the decision for the unjustified and above-inflation increase in Motsoeneng’s salary. In reply to a parliamentary question, Minister Muthambi said that “records of decisions are confidential internal documents that should be kept as such.”

Minister Muthambi seems to have forgotten that the SABC is publicly funded by way of allocations from National Treasury as well as license fees, and is therefore accountable not only to Parliament, but to the public as well, for its expenditure. The SABC's record of decisions are therefore most certainly public documents and not "confidential internal documents." 

The public broadcaster’s annual report, tabled in Parliament in September last year, indicated that Motsoeneng’s salary went up from R2.8 million to R3.7 million in the last financial year. The DA requested reasons for this exuberant increase during a Communications Portfolio Committee meeting held in October, and SABC Group CEO Frans Matlala’s response was that “the SABC followed a structured process and [that] the salaries of all executives fell within the salary scales”. 

The DA believes there was no legitimate justification for the 31% increase in Motsoeneng’s salary, especially given that other public sector employees received an increase of only 7% over the same period. 

It is therefore in the public interest that the process in which the salary of the SABC COO was decided and then grossly inflated, be publicly released. 

Statement issued by Phumzile Van Damme, MP, DA Shadow Minister of Communications, 4 February 2016