In a bid to curb its financial woes, state-owned signal distributor Sentech will start cutting off customers that don’t pay on time.

Last week, TechCentral learnt Sentech was battling to get government institutions and community broadcast customers that owe it money to pay up. It is now owed a total of R30m.

The company released a statement on Friday afternoon saying over the past three weeks it had sent letters informing customers that unless they paid up, they would be cut off.

“Most of the customers ignored our letters and the subsequent reminders. All customers signed agreements with Sentech for the provision of signal distribution services or for equipment and bandwidth capacity.”

The statement goes on to say it would be irresponsible of Sentech to allow those services to be used without being paid for. Customers that have not paid by Tuesday will see their services suspended.

“Their failure to honour their financial obligations affects the company’s revenue. The company is facing hard times and is introducing various austerity measures to cope with the shortage of cash.”

If those customers have still not paid by the end of the month, Sentech said it would consider cancelling contracts.

Sentech would not disclose the names of the customers that owe it money, because it had signed nondisclosure agreements with them.

The signal distributor needed all its customers to come to the party, because it was facing a tough financial situation.

TechCentral is in possession of a presentation put together by the company’s board, which was supposed to be presented to parliament last week.

The presentation revealed Sentech’s auditors were concerned about its ability to continue as a going concern. The auditors also raised an “emphasis of matter” based on the risk that government could refuse to bail it out if it ran into a cash-flow crisis. — Staff reporter, TechCentral