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Johannesburg - The Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) is applying brakes to the economy, with clients having battled to gain access to the office's website since February.
Any enterprise wanting to do business in the formal economy has to register with Cipro before bank accounts can be opened or tax numbers and import permits obtained.
Problems grew even worse last week, a number of angry Cipro website users told Sake24.com on Tuesday.
According to Cipro spokesperson Elsabé Conradie, a team from the department of trade and industry and Cipro is attempting to identify the problem but has so far been unable to stabilise the website.
At the beginning of February the website started to develop problems.
Users are regularly thrown off the site because traffic is simply too heavy and there is insufficient capacity. This means that users cannot register close corporations or companies or submit annual returns, said a source who provides these services to clients for a fee.
He says the call centre is a joke and thinks the agents have simply decided to stop answering the phone - all that a caller gets is the option to leave a message for someone to return the call.
The backlog for the submission of annual returns is increasing. If these are not returned on time, Cipro deregisters a business.
Fines are imposed for late submission of returns, and the website costs users a huge amount of time. They are cut off from their constitutional right of access to government information and services, says the source.
Cipro is also currently conducting a forensic investigation requested by the department of trade and industry.
Michael Twum-Darko, the head of information, was put on four months'
"special leave" two weeks ago while the investigation is under way.
His suspension is related to the awarding of a R153m tender to the unknown entity VALORit, which was to have implemented a new information-management system for Cipro. The Auditor-General has recently concluded an investigation into this tender.
- Sake24.com
For business news in Afrikaans, go to Sake24.com.