SACAP
I think the government loves to get involved in regulating systems and existing processes when it comes to generating revenue. SACAP is such an organisation. In short it is a council (amongst others) that one HAS TO belong to in order to practice Architecture in South Africa.
It is all very politically correct to instate such policies under the guise of controlling the field, increasing quality, and basically stop the unqualified from practicing. All this is all very pretty on paper but when you are charging R2000 a year now and increasing sharply with every year that progress in order to pay for “increasing costs” it is not acceptable.
What increasing costs? Perhaps they should have remained in their previous premises instead of moving to extremely expensive prime real-estate. The joys of the abuse of power! With most professionals having already been forced to register there is only the job of payment collections to really maintain. Why now are we paying ever increasing fees that have little or no benefit to the architectural practitioner on the street that has been retrenched?
The telephones are not often answered and emails are blatantly ignored even when a read receipt has been dispatched back to the sender! So I know you have read my numerous emails!
Why is there no person that can have enough respect to answer a person’s requests for help? I have been retrenched and obviously don’t have the money to settle the fees. Yet, there is no reply suggesting a possible plan of action such as putting the account on hold. Just periodically automated emails sent in triplicate stating that the options are to pay up or be removed from the register.
If this happens then not only am I not able to practice but I also am unable to earn any money to be able to pay said fees, and then of course, the exorbitant fees to be reinstated with SACAP.
So can ANYONE from SACAP please explain to me how they can help me?
Dear Jo
Thank you for taking the time to blog about SACAP.
You will find that you are not alone.
You can find many more unhappy posters on the Design Mind Website.
I suggets that you do a serch for SACAP and you will find numerous blogs and groups who are all complaining about these issues.
I do believe that we are going to need to stand together and actively campaign against SACAP as they are showing complete disregard towards us in the architectural profession. They also do not act in a transparrant manner and in my opinion verging on extortion.
Well I for one am tired of being told what to do. If there are enough people interested I can put up a website about it. I've done it before with http://www.imperialrental.co.za/
Time for new action I think. let me know what you think.