CIPA warns youth against fraud

Lebogang Baingapi | Tuesday October 31, 2017 15:31

He made the warning during a capacity building workshop organised by Jwaneng mine to empower the community on business registration and compliance. Murangi also highlighted that there are shelf companies, which have been deregistered by CIPA because they owe annual returns.

He further warned that trading with a deregistered company could attract a penalty fine of P20,000. Additionally, Murangi said, if a person is found to have provided misleading information to the officers, he/she shall be liable to a fine of up to P100,000.

“Be warned that after registering the company, you should comply by submitting the annual returns to avoid being removed from the registration. Though we implore you to engage a secretary after three months of registration, we should also warn you of some fraudulent secretaries who are not legally registered,” Murangi said.

He highlighted that they recently removed more than 66,000 companies from the register, adding that for July to September 2017, they were expecting 31,000 companies to have submitted their annual returns, but unfortunately only 5,381 did.

Murangi further advised aspiring entrepreneurs to adhere and abide by the laws, especially informing the office about any change of particulars, operating office and displaying of business certificate all the time. He assured that the office would continue to monitor submission of annual returns to make sure that small companies also complied.

The aim of the workshop was to empower the people from Samane, Mokhomma, Tsonyane, Lefhoko, Maboane and Jwaneng, who recently participated in the beadwork and pottery skill transfer, to know how to register their businesses and companies.

The five days workshop was aimed at benefiting individual participants as well as coaching them to develop the spirit of teamwork and entrepreneurship. The participants, who came in large numbers, learned about different beadwork designs.

On the pottery side, the young and the old displayed talent on creating traditional calabash or nkgwana. Participants were also encouraged to register patent rights to protect their creativity.