The ongoing saga of the information manuals that companies need to publish, then don`t need to publish, and then MAY need to publish in the Government Gazette, in order to comply with the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) is enough to drive people crazy.
Originally, private and public organisations had to compile their manuals in accordance with sections 14 and 51 of the PAIA and get them to the government printers - for printing in the Government Gazette - by 28 February this year.
On 15 March (two weeks after the deadline had passed) everyone was informed that the deadline had been extended to 31 August.
Today, it was discovered on the justice department Web site that the minister for Justice and Constitutional Development has exempted all public and private bodies from submitting the manuals to the printers until the end of August.
However, a department spokesman says this is only an exemption in order for representations from companies regarding possible amendments to the Act to be discussed, and that parties must continue to prepare their manuals in accordance with the PAIA.
Apparently this is because companies are still required to compile and submit their information manuals to the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) by the end of the new deadline, or within six months of a company`s formation.
So now we have draft amendments (not yet signed into law), exemptions, extensions, representations, changes, new deadlines and a bunch of people in various government departments that don`t really seem to know what the others are doing.
Under these circumstances, is it any wonder the average corporate worker who has been assigned the task of making sure his or her company is compliant with the Act is confused?
It gets worse
Worse still, although the PAIA is supposed to be available online, even someone who knows exactly which sections of the Act they are looking for will struggle to make sense of the convoluted and complicated government sites.
Another issue has been the punishment for failure to comply.
We have draft amendments (not yet signed into law), exemptions, extensions, representations, changes, new deadlines and a bunch of people in various government departments that don`t really seem to know what each other are doing.
Rodney Weidemann, journalist, ITWeb
Initially it was said that the fines could be up to R10 million or two years in prison, but then the SAHRC reported on its Web site that there is no imprisonment of up to two years in terms of the SAHRC Act. Of course it fails to enlighten us as to whether there are such fines or prison sentences in terms of the PAIA, which is really the issue, one would think.
A further issue is what will happen if the draft amendments - which say that companies no longer need to publish manuals in the Gazette due to the high cost and the logistical problems experienced by the printers - are passed into law by the minister.
The problem is, what happens regarding the companies that were on the ball and complied before the original 28 February cut-off date?
I have been told that the printing costs for the manuals are R275 per page. Considering that companies could have anywhere between five and 30 pages to a manual, that could turn out to be a fair whack of cash, and small businesses in particular could struggle.
Will these companies have an opportunity to reclaim the money they spent simply by virtue of following the letter of the law, or will it disappear into yet another government black hole? I would tend to think it would be the latter.
While this money may not be all that much for a big corporation to spend, this could be the money that helps to keep smaller organisations afloat through trying times.
It does seem to me that rewarding those who complied with the law by taking their money and then declaring that the tardy businesses don`t need to pay the same, would be akin to the licensing department suddenly declaring that we no longer need the credit card licences, so the only ones to suffer are those who did it correctly the first time around.
And that would be about as fair as yet again extending the driving licence deadline for those who feel that five years` grace and one extension aren`t already enough. Although it seems as though when it comes to the PAIA, extensions to deadlines are something of the norm.
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