That's right you read right. We are now in limbo – how do you advise companies on what to do for the next year when new codes are coming out? I met a company today that would be interested in doing some ED stuff to get them to 30 points – it'll be an expensive exercise so my compliance face (I don't have a transformation face) told them that whatever advice I give them might not be applicable in eight months' time. How can companies now plan on anything when there are three possibilities
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The codes will change
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We voice our discontent and the codes remain the same
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A compromise is published which is different to everything
Yet Rob is so confident – and I can't see where he gets this from. His utterances are devoid of any form of reality. As per this quote from Business Report
The revised codes were introduced to "plug the gaps" in the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act and related legislation. These gaps included fronting, "tick-box" compliance, and the exorbitant amounts of money that small enterprises had to pay to consultants to prove they were BEE compliant. The codes' scorecard had been revised, with five elements instead of seven.
Does our honourable minister of trade and industry not realise that he's made more work for consultants. It's taken the industry 5 years to create standard interpretations of the 2007 codes – they were an embarrassment when they were published with grammatical and mathematical errors that had to be interpreted. The slew of charters that have come out since have emulated their older sibling by competing rabidly for the greatest number of nonsensical errors. We therefore can expect Rob's new codes to be as bad if not worse. Who's going to interpret this – the consultants.
Then there's the fact that Rob still hasn't published the codes – apparently the government printer let him down on the day. It's not his problem though, he's guaranteed a pension when he retires. I suppose we have to ask how he's going to be paid his pension when his BEE plans have destroyed whatever's left of the economy.
Our job is to send in constructive and non-vitriolic comments that goad Rob to see the error of his ways. I'll make this my job and I'll lead us in this quest. My first draft will inevitably attack Rob, the cabinet and the DTI at their core – but will be tempered in the final draft. We've shown that we can object to things like eTolling and the secrecy bill. We're going to have to exactly the same thing here.
And my thanks to Mr O'Neil who kindly sent me a legible version of the Tuesday's presentation. Most of the new scorecard is in here (and yes skills development spend is now 6% of payroll).
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