Johannesburg — IT BEGGARS belief that well over a year after the alarm was officially raised over the huge backlogs and administrative problems dogging the Companies and Intellectual Property Office (Cipro), no action has been taken.

Not only did auditor-general Shauket Fakie issue a disclaimer in his 2004-05 audit report because of serious financial problems within the organisation, but Cipro's own chairman, Rob Angel, expressed concern in the annual report the same year about the body's substandard performance. There is quite obviously a major problem at Cipro, and it is up to the responsible ministry -- trade and industry -- to take action.

That has not happened. The problems have been going on for years. Companies' complaints about Cipro's poor performance, like that of many other trade and industry institutions, have fallen on deaf ears. Once again this week Parliament's standing committee on public accounts called for heads to roll in the department for the financial mismanagement at Cipro.

The issue is now critical. Registering companies, close corporations and their directors is vital to the functioning of business. In addition, Cipro handles the registration of trademarks, patents, copyrights and designs.

Complaints range from slow turnaround times in processing applications to losing documents. Indeed, Angel noted that Cipro had been criticised for its "unbearable" turnaround times in processing applications, for losing documents and for various mistaken amendments to corporate data. It takes Cipro five days to register a new company and, at the end of March last year, the process of registering a trademark took 19 months.

Backlogs in updating information have meant that businesses have been forced to wait for many months to lodge new information with the organisation. The logjam recently resulted in a highly embarrassing situation when Fakie fingered several ministers and senior officials for not fully disclosing business interests. It turned out that his report was based on outdated information from Cipro, and most of these ministers were subsequently cleared.

Given the trade and industry ministry's casual attitude to Cipro's crippling problems, we should not hold our breath for action any time soon. This is an area where the private sector would not only do a far better job, but would probably jump at the chance. It should be given the opportunity to do so.