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Registration of electrical contractors:
the confusion continues...
by Mark Botha, editor
The ongoing saga of the statutory registration of electrical contractors has taken another turn, with the announcement by the Electrical Contracting Board (ECB) that its function of registering contractors had been extended until 31 August 2012, or to a later date determined by the chief inspector at the Department of Labour (DoL).
The announcement contradicts the earlier announcement in March this year that the DoL would be taking over the function of registration of electrical contractors from the ECB with effect from 1 June 2012. This is the latest in a series of contradictory announcements by the DoL and the ECB regarding contractor registration, that have sown considerable confusion in the industry.
The reasons for this announcement, says chief inspector Thobile Lamati, are threefold. The department's IT infrastructure was not ready to take on the task. The DoL also wanted to give the ECB "enough time to wind up all issues relating to the registration of contractors". The DoL also needed time to test the efficiency of the system and to "put structures in place" at its regional offices.
According to ECB secretary James Baker, the DoL's initial plan had been to take over the function as early as May this year. It had been agreed that the DoL would give the ECB a six-month notice period. Upon receiving the department's letter of notification on 15 February 2012, however, the ECB found that the letter had been written three months earlier, in December 2011, effectively giving the board only three months to prepare for the handover. The extension of the takeover date to 1 September this year (assuming no further announcements) follows a subsequent meeting with the chief inspector during which the ECB explained the matter of the "lost" letter.
The ECB's statement following this meeting confirms that electrical contractors will register with the chief inspector "or with a person appointed by the chief inspector" in terms of regulation 6(2) of the Electrical Installation Regulations. "The person appointed," reads the ECB statement, "is the Electrical Contracting Board of SA, so nothing has changed at this point in time."
But a lot has indeed changed since the registration of contractors was first legislated to ensure competence in the industry and to control the issuing of certificates of compliance (CoCs).
Registration falls under the control of the DoL, but, for reasons of its own, the department delegated the task to the ECB in 1992. The latter, in turn, passed on the physical work of registering contractors to the Electrical Contractors Association of South Africa (ECA) the following year. This agreement was terminated last year when the ECB lowered the agreed-upon registration fee.
On the basis that the registration of electrical contractors was no longer economically viable, the ECA responded by giving the ECB six months' notice to terminate the arrangement under which it registered electrical contractors on behalf of the ECB. The arrangement thus ended on 30 September 2011.
During that same month, the ECB announced that it had appointed Voltex, a chain of electrical wholesalers and member of the Bidvest group, to continue the registration of electrical contractors in place of the ECA. This sparked objections and concerns by the ECA and non-Voltex electrical wholesalers over possible conflicts of interest (see Registration of electrical contractors - confusion reigns supreme, Vector, October 2011, page 12).
However, the ECB never had the express authority of the chief inspector to sub-delegate the registration of electrical contractors to Voltex. Upon learning this, Voltex abandoned its ambitions to undertake the task, and ceased all registrations, leaving the industry in what EE Publishers managing director Chris Yelland called a "state of significant confusion" surrounding the administration and implementation of the registration process.
It was against this backdrop that the chief inspector first announced that contractor registration would be done at the DoL's Labour Centres as of 1 June 2012 (see Department of Labour dumps the Electrical Contracting Board, Vector, March 2012, page 15). But in this latest about-turn, the DoL has now indicated that the ECB will in fact continue with the registration of electrical contractors until 31 August 2012, or until some later, unspecified date that may still be announced.
As for the issuing of CoCs, ECB secretary James Baker stated to Vector that the DoL was preparing for the introduction of a "multiple vendor" system, whereby selected private sector role-players would be accredited and authorised to sell CoCs on behalf of the DoL. However, at the time of writing, no accreditation policy had yet been finalised.
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