The SABC has been slapped with a R19-million lawsuit by its service provider, Lorna Vision, over non-payment of services rendered in respect of the collection of TV licence fees. Lorna Vision filed court papers at the Joburg High Court last Friday, in which it demands that the public broadcaster pay up two of its invoices that it said were never processed.
The company said it was awarded a contract to collect TV licence fees from SABC customers. It initiated a 10 000 pilot programme for licence renewals a month and assisted the SABC grow its revenue. It was also responsible of compiling data of SABC customers. Part of the deal, according to the service level agreement dated July 10 2015 and annexed to the papers was to collect fees from customers who were in arrears, and from pirate viewers.
The court papers show that Lorna Vision was to benefit 10% from all the fees collected from the 10 000 SABC’s existing clients, and 40% from the pirate viewers. The papers further show that in the agreement expected to run for three years, Lorna Vision was also meant to benefit 27% from the fees collected from customers who were in arrears.
But the company says in its papers, despite delivering on its obligations and sending all the invoices to the SABC as per the agreement, the public broadcaster failed to approve its two invoices – one for R16-million and another for R3-million. These amounts, according to the court papers, emanated from an additional addendum that was added to the agreement on June 1 2016.
The two parties had agreed that Lorna Vision was to benefit 60% from all the fees collected from the licence renewals of 330 000 customers a month. Lorna Vision represented by Peyper Attorneys, said in its papers that though the contract was declared unlawful, reviewed and set aside by the Joburg High Court on August 2 2017, it complied with its obligations and rendered the services as per the agreement and addendum signed by both parties.
“Despite demand, the defendant failed to honour its obligations by making payments to the plaintiff , by making payments of the aggregate amount of R19 234 509, 26, or any portion thereof, and which amount of due, owed and payable by the defendant to the plaintiff ,” read the papers.
It also accused the SABC of refusing to account by providing its accounts and the commission reports for the period April 2017, which was going to help it determine further amounts owed to it.
“The defendant enjoyed and received financial and organisational benefits of the services rendered by the plaintiff under the service level agreement, particularly the mining and data cleansing of the defendant’s TV licence database, the construction and implementation of the required pilot programme and the identifying and creation of additional revenue from pirate viewers.”
SABC Spokesperson Mmoni Seapolelo confirmed that the public broadcaster was served with summons from Lorna Vision, and said the summons emanate from a contract that was declared invalid and set aside by the court in July 2017.
She said the SIU was currently in court to try to recover the monies paid to Lorna Vision.
