Unions at SAA have threatened to strike after the company said it may have to cut hundreds of jobs to save costs.
The leadership of struggling flag carrier South African Airways has said that questions around its ability to continue operating as a going concern were behind its failure to table its annual report for the 2018-19 financial year.
A delegation told the committee that Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu’s reservations about whether the national carrier could continue on as a going concern would make accessing much-needed finance harder. SAA said that at the same time that its ability to operate as a going concern hung in the balance, it desperately needed access to finance. Board member Martin Kingston told the committee that a key issue for the airline was its ability to maintain access to financial service markets. Kingston said stabilising SAA’s liquidity depended on refinancing R9.2 billion in debt, securing R2 billion for working capital, reducing costs and boosting revenue.
He said if financial assistance was not given to the national carrier soon, R40 billion worth of financial obligations would have to be settled “immediately”.Kingston said the possibility of strikes by employees was a threat to the national carrier. Industrial action would make its dire financial situation and floundering investor and client confidence worse. He said the company ran the risk of losing R50 million daily if a strike were to ensue.
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