Minister Muthambi calls for MDDA's vacant posts to be filled

"Vacancies in critical positions reported during the quarter should be noted. Overall, the MDDA continues to perform, but my immediate intervention will be to request the Board to expedite the appointment of key positions in the next three months," said the Minister.

"No major interventions are required. However, the repositioning of the entity through legislative revision is critical to improve the entity's performance," she said.

Currently, the positions of CEO, COO, Company Secretary, Project Director, Contracts and Legal remain vacant.

Minister Muthambi was speaking before the MDDA briefed the Portfolio Committee on Communications on its aggregated quarter report for the 2013/2014 financial year, covering the period of 1 April to 31 December 2013 in Cape Town on Tuesday.

To date, 570 media projects are reported to have been supported to the amount of R275m.

The entity has received unqualified reports and clean audits since its inception. Community radio commands 25 percent of the total radio listenership in the country, but 20 percent of the country's total R35bn ad spend.

The entity has three revenue streams, including government (through the GCIS), print media and broadcasting entities licensed in terms of section 89 of the Electronic Communications Act of 2005.

Media period

During the reporting period, the MDDA facilitated the training of 2,021 individuals and awarded more than 247 bursaries in Media Studies.

According to the report, more than 12 percent of government advertising expenditure of more than R60m has been spent on community and small commercial media from April 2011 to March 2013. This was achieved through the partnership with GCIS Media Buying, Milele Group and other partners.

During the quarter, R1.8m was received in transfers. The entity exhibited R13m under-spending in all the programme areas due to the late approvals.

The Minister said for an entity with such a relatively small budget, this was a major concern.

She said the problem had its origins in two areas.

"The first area is legislative; the approval of funding of the projects is the exclusive domain of the Board as prescribed by the MDDA Act of 2002. Therefore, there are no delegations to the executive management.

"Given the limited meetings allocated for the Board, it takes longer for the projects to be approved and contracted. This makes the project funding cycle (approval or release of first tranche and closure or final tranche) longer," she said.

Faith Muthambi

Minister Muthambi said she would conduct a due diligence on both the MDDA Act and regulations to identify areas for revision to address this problem, particularly in terms of delegations to the executive management.

She said the commitment made previously by the GCIS to amend these two instruments may have to be effected to expedite the approval process while repositioning the entity to new challenges.

With regard to the tranche disbursement system, this is a critical tool to minimise risks inevitable to funding community media projects. Therefore, we will work with the entity to strengthen monitoring and support, while not lessening compliance.

Non-Financial Performance

The entity has achieved its targets relating to its mandate, however, Minister Muthambi said areas of improvement are required in monitoring and evaluation and research so that the impact of the support can be continuously measured.

"For this entity to be an authoritative voice in media development and diversity, more capacity should be built in research capacity," she said.

The MDDA also guaranteed that more community and small commercial newspaper and magazines are produced in indigenous languages in the district municipalities across the country.

It further created the correct environment to allow for diverse and innovative content, languages and cultures so that they enjoy airtime in the three-tier broadcasting system.

Since the dawn of democracy community radio has grown and now commands more than 25% of total radio listenership, the minister said.

In addition, more businesses are benefiting from access to government advertising. Through MDDA and its partnership with Sentech signal distribution costs for community broadcasters have been reduced