PM Africa Magazine Issue 02 | Page 23

H&S/skills frustrating and unfortunate issue is that even though the NEBOSH courses are available and presented here in South Africa, they are not formally recognized by the NQF and therefore cannot be credited to an individual’s qualifications and experience. Therefore, the SACPCMP does not recognise a NEBOSH qualification as adequate for registration purposes. The NQF system does not have facilities for converting or translating the NEBOSH qualifications into South African credit. The new Construction Regulations 2014 are not all bad though, it must be said. More emphasis has been placed on how accountability, responsibility and liability have been laid out between clients, designers, principle contractors, sub- contractors and service providers. This added clarity proves useful going forward towards the implementation date planned in August 2015 but there is concern that the OHS community at large have not adequately prepared for the impending avalanche of requests from organisations to implement the required changes for legal compliance. With regards to the issues of the OHS Practitioners suffering much frustration and setbacks in the registration process, the amount of registered and “competent” Officers, Managers and Agents will be few and far between – therefore providing the lion’s share of actual work and contracts to these precious few. Q