Question NW655 to the Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation
12 June 2020 - NW655
Powell, Ms EL to ask the Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation
What are the reasons that (a) payments are not allocated resulting in Fidelity Fund Certificates not being issued to estate agents on time and (b) the eaab.org.za portal is down or unresponsive regularly due to a failing Information Technology system for years?
Reply:
a) The payments deposited by agents to the Estate Agency Affairs Board (EAAB) are currently being processed manually on the Systems Application Product (SAP) software. This has resulted in a backlog and the Fidelity Fund Certificates not being issued on time. To mitigate this challenge, additional temporary employees were appointed to assist with the manual capturing of bank statements. As at 23 April 2020, all payments were allocated and 42 719 Fidelity Fund Certificates have been issued.
The current SAP software that is used by the Estate Agency Affairs Board does have shortcomings, such as the issuing of Fidelity Fund Certificates for principals linked to more than one firm. The EAAB has appointed a SAP specialist to address the software-related issues which are delaying the issuance of Fidelity Fund Certificates.
b) The Estate Agency Affairs Board acknowledges the challenges related to its portal and has accordingly developed a two-pronged approach to address this matter;
(i) To utilise its internal capacity with the assistance of a service provider to stabilise the current system, as a short term measure.
(ii) In the long term, the Estate Agency Affairs Board will overhaul its entire Information Communications Technology system. To this end, a tender, RFP – ERP/2020/009, was advertised on 28 February 2020 and a briefing session was held on 10 March 2020. The closing date for the tender was scheduled for 30 March 2020, but the National Treasury subsequently advised that it be extended to 1 June 2020 in view of the National Lockdown.