Africa-Press – South-Africa. Minister of Trade and Industry Ebrahim Patel says his department has struggled to find qualified candidates to appoint to the board of the SA Bureau of Standards (SABS), which has been in administration for over four years.
The bureau was placed into administration in July 2018 by then-minister Rob Davies after he lost confidence in its directors. Davies axed the group’s board for “underperformance,” saying local industry was suffering because of its poor service delivery.
But what was supposed to be a temporary fix lasting around six months has now dragged on for four years and four months. As a result, since July 2018, the SABS has functioned without a permanent board or a full-time chief executive officer.
Searching for expertise
In a briefing to Parliament’s oversight committee last week, Patel said his department had struggled to find candidates with “requisite technical expertise” wanting to serve as directors.
Since Davies removed the last board in 2018, the SABS has been run by a team of administrators. Three administrators were appointed by Davies and two remain.
Patel told MPs his department had recently put much of its focus into fixing wrongdoing at the National Lotteries Commission (NLC). Now that he had seen “progression” at the NLC, the department could shift its focus to improving governance at SABS.
Once appointed, the new board will choose a permanent CEO.
Patel spoke after a briefing by the office of the Auditor-General (AG), which criticised the quality of internal governance at SABS. The absence of a full-time board and permanent CEO had led to instability, it said.
“[The bureau is facing] human resource challenges due to loss of critical skills, long-standing critical vacancies and inadequate capacity,” said the AG’s office in a report to Parliament.
SABS has been operating at a loss since the 2017/18 financial year. The AG noted it only turned an R50.8 million profit in the most recent financial year due to the reversal of an impairment loss.
On the right track
While the AG’s office said SABS was lacking truly independent oversight, the group’s leadership was more upbeat.
Jodi Scholtz, the group’s lead administrator, said recent positive financial results were proof that its turnaround strategy was bearing fruit.
“While this is the first year that the SABS has posted a profit, we believe that the efforts will continue to bear fruit in the years to come”, she said in response to a request by News24 Business.
Scholtz said the group was seeing an increase in business and an improvement in turnaround times for things like developing standards and resolving customer service requests.
“The initial phase of the SABS turnaround strategy has taken some time to produce positive results,” said Scholtz. “While we still have a lot of work to do to become a self-sustainable commercial entity, the financial results are encouraging.”
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