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The DA’s request for an urgent meeting with Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba has been ignored despite the airline being in a state of crisis. The DA will again insist on an urgent meeting with the Minister to correctly gauge the best way forward.

Yesterday, the Minister confidently claimed that the “there is absolutely no crisis” at SAA.

This statement came on the back of the establishment of a task team charged with what might be thought of as mission impossible – designing a turnaround strategy for the ailing state carrier by December 15 of this year.

The DA finds little comfort in the Minister’s reassurances, given the fact that SAA has haemorrhaged R14.7 billion over the last ten years. If a R14.7 billion loss doesn’t constitute a crisis, then the Minster clearly has significantly lower minimum financial performance standards than the DA.

That R14.7 billion could have gone towards:

• Building 245 000 RDP houses;
• funding the Youth Wage Subsidy three times over to offer young unemployed South Africans the opportunity to gain work skills and experience; and
• upgrading nearly 10 hospitals in poorer townships and rural areas.

The DA is therefore amazed that the Minister has chosen to ignore our request for a meeting. The Minister must recognise that aviation is a highly specialised industry and it is therefore prudent to consult widely on such matters, particularly when such huge amounts from the public purse are concerned.

I will therefore be writing to the Minister once more to insist on an urgent meeting to discuss the future of the state carrier and the viable alternatives going forward.

In this time of crisis, the Minister should be welcoming inputs from all interested stakeholders.