Ann Crotty
Reports that the registrations backlog at the newly established Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) will be cleared up by the end of next month have been enthusiastically received by company secretaries and other users who have been unable to lodge annual returns or changes to company profiles during the past two months.
Yesterday the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) issued a statement referring to the public’s concern regarding the registration backlog at the CIPC and requested that the recently appointed companies commissioner, Astrid Ludin, be given a chance to clear the backlog by the end of August.
The statement noted: “The management of CIPC has given an undertaking to the dti and the portfolio committee on trade and industry that they are working around the clock to address the backlog… The minister and the department has full confidence in the commissioner to address the current problems and challenges.”
The CIPC will brief the committee at the end of next month on the progress made in clearing the backlog.
Several users said yesterday that there had been some indications of a slight improvement in service levels but they queried even the low number of registrations that the CIPC claimed to have completed in the past two months.
“I don’t know of anyone who has managed to register a company in that period,” remarked one user.
Another frustrated user said the problems were enormous and would be extremely difficult to bring under control by the end of next month.
“The commissioner is attempting to deal with large-scale fraud of the type evident in the hijacking of Kalahari Resources and small-scale fraud involved in registering companies without proper credentials and it is trying to do this while implementing wide-sweeping new companies’ legislation,” said the user.
He added that the problems were worsened by the fact that legal challenges had made it impossible for the CIPC to upgrade its old computer systems.
He said the minister and the dti would need to be more than just “confident” that the new commissioner and her team would be able to address the problem, stating that considerably more resources would have to be committed.