Dear Deam Macpherson

I trust you are well Sir. I believe you are part of the trade and industry committee and deal with NRCS/SABS related issues.

There is a new requirement that SABS is administering on behalf of ICASA called CoC (Certificate of Compliance). They are certificates issued to all electrical devices that emit noise. While I agree with the requirements as its important, what I don’t agree is that the SABS is charging a fee of R16 000 per application. As a small business this is unattainable and going to impact on all organizations. Based on their requirements and guidelines almost every product will require this as most electronics contain some sort of circuit board, therefore placing most electronics within the scope of the requirement.

My concern is that these fees were potentially never Gazetted or at least I'm not aware of any such document at all which mean no one was able to question or raise there concerns. I’m a strong activist for compliance and will comply to any NRCS,SABS,ICASA regulation but cannot afford R16000 per application. If I have a 1000 products at R16000 per application it can cost around R16 000 000 for CoCs only. That's not including testing of any sort. Testing costs a fortune as well.

To put it into context the NRCS charges R2020 per application, which is still costly but one can manage that, ICASA is around R4000 per application. Some products will require both ICASA and NRCS. Which is fine as its necessary, however this fee of R16000 by the SABS is completely unjustifiable, and no one can afford this.

As a constituent I’m pleading just to have a look into it. As far as I'm aware all government institutions fees are gazetted. I might be wrong but if this is the case im not sure where R16000 comes from if its mealy submitting documents. Im sure one can look into the amount.

Thank you, I do apologies for taking up your time.

Here are links to the SABS website: https://www.sabs.co.za/emc/ , the fee will be under the EMC/CoC Application.

Regards