S.Africa’s national broadcaster to cut staff: spokesman

South Africa’s loss-making Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is to embark on a three-year downsizing process in a move to cut costs, a spokesman said on Wednesday.

“We are not going to fire anybody but offer voluntary packages. We are going to allow people to resign or take early retirement,” spokesman Kaizer Kganyago told AFP.

The public broadcaster employs 3,600 people and broadcasts in the country’s 11 official languages.

Kganyago said the goal was to trim staff to “3,000 within three years” adding that the wage bill was the highest source of costs.

The corporation is partly funded by the state and other revenue comes from television licence fees and advertising.

The embattled broadcaster has been hit by management resignations and aided by government bailouts to stay afloat.

“We have inherited an almost insolvent corporation on the brink of collapse,” the board chairman Ben Ngubane told parliament on Tuesday, according to the Star newspaper.