By Jacques van Wyk, Director and Thabisa Yantolo, Candidate Attorney

The Department of Trade and Industry have not yet provided clarity on whether an entity rendering a “permitted service” in terms of the Regulations to the Disaster Management Act 2002 (published by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs on 29 April 2020), is required to obtain a certificate (or to update their existing certificates) from the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission’s (“CIPC“) Bizportal website. 

The Bizportal website has however been updated and despite the reference to “essential services” it now includes a link to the “Alert Level 4 Regulations”.  It also refers employers to these Regulations in order to determine whether they can apply for such a certificate.

When making the application the employer must enter its enterprise number in order to initiate the application process. The employer will then be required to select a business category and to disclose the trading name of the business, if applicable. The employer must indicate the number of employees required to work during the lockdown, disclose the ID / passport number of the directors / members of the business and confirm the business trading address which is automatically generated. Importantly, the business categories available for the employer to select from now correspond with the ‘permitted services’ in the ‘Alert Level 4 Regulations’.  This indicates that a certificate now also applies to the ‘permitted services’ as per the Regulations.

It is advisable that a business providing a ‘permitted service’ under the Regulations should apply on the Bizportal website. The application for the certificate can be found at: https://www.bizportal.gov.za/essential_service.aspx.