Mokgadi as newly appointed GAAL CEO

POLOKWANE – Mokgadi Matli will for the next five years, starting November 1, occupy the position of CEO at the Gateway Airport Authority Limited (GAAL) after having acted in the position for the last 14 months.

The position remained vacant from 2020, following leadership instabilities which the authority acknowledged in a statement posted on social media in early December introducing her.

Matli is officially tasked with the responsibility to ensure that among other things, revenue generated at the Polokwane International Airport sustains its category 7 status and improves over time.

With her professional background as senior human resources specialist, Matli’s acting tenure was introduced simultaneously with the downgrading of the local airport to category two in 2020 after the SA Civil Aviation Authority found it could not provide minimum level emergency services required to maintain their aerodrome licence at the time.

While the old has been salvaged, the authority’s airports still struggle with economic efficiency.

“One of our studies has shown that the airport will not survive by the revenue generated from passengers alone because we do not have that much traffic. So as part of our turnaround strategy towards becoming sustainable at least, we have projects to help generate an income,” Matli said.

For a six-year period, Treasury approved R289m for the implementation of several turnaround strategies, with R70m assigned for this fiscal year ending in March 2024. The transportation of cargo goods in the SADC region and nationally, tops the list of what they believe could generate a sizable income.

“We are engaging big farmers associations selling high-end produce with an international market or interest towards a relationship, and have gone to the extent of proposing developments of cold rooms to guarantee that their goods will reach destinations in its desired state. We are having the same engagements with miners,” Matli said.

“On top of that, the development of Tubatse and Musina Special Economic zones have us leveraging how best we can create sustainable relationships that will bring an income, whether in regional Africa or beyond.”

In the next six years, there needs to be physical progress in this strategy, she remarked.

Currently, R2.8m is made from aircraft hangers for tenants, who also pay for approach parking and landing. From this fiscal year, the appointment of a facility management company, firetrucks and infrastructure maintenance to ensure category sustenance has used up to around 75% of the budget.

Matli, however, maintains that the biggest challenge in making the authority work is the small budget allocated to them, which she described as “almost insufficient”.

“The R70m for this year helps, but that does not cover all safety, security and compliance measures. Ideally, we should be able to purchase new fire trucks for example, but we refurbish and repair old ones. We are required to have an intruder detection system. It costs R32m, which is a huge chunk of our yearly budget to use for a single duty anyway. So we use CCTV which is not as effective compared to that system,” she explained.