ANA reports that Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Wednesday that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) needed technical experts to make up three-quarters of their staff complements, whereas presently up to half were administrative support staff.  

Speaking to Parliament's select committee on public enterprises and communication, he said efforts to address this were underway, but, as the woes of entities such as Eskom, SAA and Denel worsened, the running of his department had for the past year been a case of crisis management.  "It has been a roller coaster.  We are now beginning to understand their operations and what the consequences of the recent past have been," Gordhan indicated.  Asked about turnaround plans at some of the parastatals, Gordhan told MPs that in deeply troubled companies the chances of successfully implementing such a strategy had been remote.  "It is easy to get a consultant to draft a turnaround strategy.  It is another question whether a state-owned entity has the capacity to implement it," he cautioned.

• Read the original of the report on the above at Engineering News