State printing works told to keep to schedule

The high court in Pretoria has ordered the Government Printing Works (GPW), which has been beset by technical glitches that affected the publishing of legal notices in the Government Gazette, to print the publications every Friday without interruption or delay.

The court ruled last week that all requests for quotations and publications of notices dealing with administration of estates, insolvencies, company notices, public auctions and registration of political parties, among others, should be attended to promptly.

The GPW is the custodian of many government publications including tender bulletins, regulation gazettes, provincial gazettes, national gazettes and legal notices. It experienced a technical glitch in April that affected the printing of gazettes and legal notices, among other functions.

In May, parliament’s home affairs portfolio committee said it had recommended an investigation into the loss of data after a system crash at the GPW.

René Bekker, COO of the SA Restructuring and Insolvency Practitioners Association (Sapira), a body advancing the interests of the restructuring, turnaround and insolvency profession in the country, said: “We have been dealing with this service failure from the GPW for four months now.

“The advertisement of court orders, meetings of creditors, sale of business transactions in terms of Section 34 [of the Insolvency Act] and the confirmation of liquidation and distribution accounts have not appeared timeously, resulting in huge pecuniary losses for our members.”

Bekker, who brought the urgent court application on behalf of Sapira, said the application followed numerous attempts by the association to ascertain issues surrounding the “ongoing service failure of prompt and timely publications in the gazette”.

“The efficient and timely weekly publication in the Government Gazette of notices is indispensable to allow insolvency practitioners to comply with their statutory obligations as per the Insolvency Act,” said Bekker.

“Insolvency practitioners simply cannot perform their functions and thus cannot practise their chosen trade, occupation or profession, and cannot earn an income from it — if they are unable to have these notices published promptly.”

Asked for comment, home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi said he had not seen the judgment yet.

During his budget vote in May, Motsoaledi said the GPW is “self-financing and is able to have surpluses despite not getting a cent from National Treasury”.

“It is now extending its footprint into Sadc [Southern African Development Community] countries in the way of performing printing work for them,” Motsoaledi said.

“Earlier this year I was perturbed when GPW experienced a system down time where the data centre was hit by a power surge that damaged critical hardware.

“These service interruptions and data loss affected the auditing process at the GPW, frustrated the legal system of the country in that gazettes were delayed and interfered with the social and economic system of the country.”

Motsoaledi has said he has taken steps to “get to the bottom of this problem because the facts we have point to the direction that it might not have been just an accident”.