The ICT charter, which has repeatedly stalled after it was first mooted about seven years ago, should be scrapped as the steering committee has not yet reached consensus on its content, say industry players.
The charter has been dogged by delays since 2003, when the process of launching the paper started. In May 2005, another “final” document was released, but this process was interrupted by the Department of Trade and Industry's introduction of BEE codes, with which the charter needed to be aligned.
Government gazetted the BEE Code of Good Practice in February 2007. In addition, several industry role-players have raised concerns over various drafts of the document. The Electronic Industry Federation (EFT) would not sign off on the charter, saying its targets were unrealistic.
The department was expected to sign off on the final document and have it gazetted in April, a deadline that came and went without the charter being signed into law.
Now, industry players are calling for the entire process to be scrapped and replaced with another mechanism that would have the same outcomes.
Another solution
Black IT Forum secretary general Motse Mfuleni says the charter process has stalled. “Maybe we should review the process of meeting the objectives of the charter without the charter.”
In addition, he argues, other sectors such as mining and tourism that have charters have not seen any trickle down benefit to small black companies. The forum would be open to a debate around scrapping the charter, he adds.
No agreement
Adrian Schofield, president of the Computer Society SA, says the charter has stalled because it has not been unanimously agreed to by all the parties. As a result, he says, the only way forward is to scrap the lengthy charter process and replace it with the codes.
Schofield, who represents the society on the steering committee, points out that the DTI cannot have the charter gazetted unless all parties agree to its contents. However, the EFT's concerns that some targets are too onerous have not been resolved, he notes.
If the charter were to go ahead in its current format, many small companies in the electronic industry would end up closing their doors, says Schofield.
He explains that, for example, to comply with the charter's requirements on preferential procurement, some of the smaller companies would have to spend 300% of net profit on procurement from empowerment companies, an amount these firms could not afford. As a result, says Schofield, they would be unsuccessful in tendering for business, and would fold.
In addition, he notes, research that would consider the economic impacts of the charter and enable it to deviate from the proposed targets has not been carried out.
Schofield says this research should have been carried out when the process first started, but was not and there is no consensus among the steering committee as to whether to conduct the research now to change the onerous targets with which the EFT is unhappy.
The DTI's chief director of BEE, Nomonde Mesatywa, says the department has not had any feedback from the industry requesting the process be scrapped. She explains that the communications department is engaging with the industry to try and iron out the issues that are holding up the charter.
However, says Mesatywa, the DTI has not yet had any feedback from the communications department. Communications spokesman Tiyani Rikhotso says he will revert with feedback later today.
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