Outa: SABC should be funded by annual grant
The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) believes the SABC bill does not provide a solution to the question of how to fund the public broadcaster.
Cabinet approved the publication of the bill earlier this year for public comment.
“The bill relies on the existing methods of funding. The SABC struggles to collect TV licenses and outsources this (service). There has also been a suggestion that a household levy be implemented and collected by MultiChoice,” explains Outa’s Stefanie Fick.
“Outa believes both are problematic and have limited reach. We believe a regular annual grant to the SABC from the fiscus could be used to cover at least part of the SABC’s cost.”
The organisation believes the proposed grant could be funded by directing some money from political funding towards the public broadcaster to create a regular source of income.
“Such a regular grant could be funded by cutting wasteful expenditure in other programmes for example, moving some of the national and provincial funding for political parities- justified as support for democracy- to the SABC which would provide broader support for the SABC,” says Fick.
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