Staff working for SA Express will be receiving their June salaries despite earlier reports that the grounded airline had run out of cash, rendering it incapable of paying its people.
This comes after the Federation of Unions of South Africa (Fedusa) said SA Express management had recently indicated that the carrier’s inability to generate revenue could result in the airline not being able to pay staff at the end of the month.
Fedusa put pressure on government to provide “emergency funding”, and as a result the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) put together an intervention team to salvage the situation.
This intervention, said Business Report, had actually been embarked upon prior to the South African Civil Aviation Authority (Sacaa) withdrawing the airline’s air operator’s certificate (AOC), as well as its approved maintenance organisation (AMO) certification.
More specifically, the intervention involved “working with SA Express to address its liquidity and operational problems prior to the airline’s AOC and AMO licences being withdrawn”.
This week’s announcement that staff would be paid came as a surprise in light of an earlier statement by SA Express regarding its revenue woes.
The statement in question read that “the airline can confirm continuous engagements between labour and employees where management sensitised the concerned parties to the challenges facing the airline as well as the potential risks pertaining to the payment of salaries for the month of June.”
Having cleared up uncertainty over whether or not the airline’s staff would be paid, Public Enterprises Ministers Pravin Gordhan didn’t mince his words about SA Express.
“The grounding of the airline comes as a result of consistent deterioration of the airline’s performance over the years that compromised the safety operation of the airline,” Gordhan told EWN.
Referring to the SA Express grounding as a “classic example” of how it affects the country’s national assets, he added that the carrier’s woes had resulted from the “looting of resources” by previous executives who had not been “held accountable during their tenure at the airline”.
Gordhan’s comments follow an announcement by the DPE that SAA, SA Express and low-cost carrier Mango will be merged in a route-rationalising venture in an attempt to tighten government’s spending on aviation concerns.
