The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had to write off R32 million for two software projects, and is considering legal action against the person who is responsible, says SABC CEO Dali Mpofu.
Mpofu answered questions before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications yesterday, following the presentation of the state broadcaster's annual report. A question from Democratic Alliance MP Paul Swart concerned R52 million being written off due to "fruitless and wasteful expenditure".
In his reply, Mpofu said the largest chunk of that R52 million was due to the cancellation of two software projects that were being developed in-house.
"Those projects were originally conceived in 2002 and they have not borne fruit. A person responsible for them has since left the SABC and we are considering our legal options against her, both civil and criminal," he said.
According to the SABC's annual report, the software write-off is classified as an "impairment". It comes right below the R7.8 million computer amortisation that doubled from the previous financial year.
SABC CFO Robin Nicholson says one of the software projects was for sales and scheduling, and the other was for media and asset management.
"After about two-and-a-half years of actual development, we realised there was a better case for buying commercially available products than developing our own. Our decision to cancel the projects was largely based on the cost to acquire versus cost to complete."
Nicholson said products from two UK-based companies, which have provided similar systems to the British and Canadian public broadcasters, would be used instead.
Going outside
The SABC's annual report also states that this year it became the first African broadcaster to commission a high-definition outside broadcasting unit, at the cost of R48 million.
It says that, while there were challenges to integrating and learning to work with the new equipment, it was successful.
Consultants have been hired to assist with the roll-out of digital terrestrial TV (DTT) migration plan, as set out by the Department of Communications. According to this plan, the country should be totally DTT compliant by the end of 2011.
The annual report notes that the signal footprint was reduced, due to the move of the SABC's broadcast signal from the PAS 10 to the PAS 7 satellite. It adds that random security key changes had to be introduced to combat pirating of content via the satellite signal.
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