BUSINESS owners in the construction industry have had enough of paying for a service that they are not receiving and say the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) is “not working” for them.

This despite Kotli Molise, Communications Manager for the CIDB, saying the organisation was established to develop the construction industry.

Business owners wishing to tender for contracts in the construction industry, can only do so if registered with the CIDB.

“The CIDB Act requires contractors to register. Companies wishing to tender for contracts exceeding R200 000 must be graded via the registration system,” says Molise.

Each company is then catergorised in different grades which determine the capabilities of the company.

She says the CIDB uses the grading system as a risk-management tool so that contractors do not take on jobs that are too big for them.

According to Molise, the registration process takes a month to complete and is valid for one year.

However, a business owner who refused to be named for fear of reprisals, says she had to wait more than six months before she received her upgrade from the CIDB.

“We initially applied for a grade one in March last year, but then did work that exceeded
R1 million so we automatically qualified for a grade three.

“We then applied for an upgrade in September 2006, but only received the certificate in March this year after numerous calls, threats and letters,” says the unnamed business owner.

“We just got our certificate (which is only valid till September 2007) and we will have to apply in six months again,” she says.

The business owner says she went onto the CIDB website and discovered that the grading is supposed to be valid until 2009 despite the certificate stating 2007.

But when Bignews spoke to Molise she stated that contractors were required to renew their registration each year.

Business owners who experience problems with contacting the CIDB can report this to 0800 11 24 32.

Information from: www.businessowner.co.za

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 3:43 am and is filed under Building Construction, Construction Equipment, General News. Tags: construction, Construction Industry Development Board, Discover, industry, Kotli Molise, risk-management tool. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.