THE Corporate Affairs Commission has said company registration certificates will, henceforth, be sent to customers through courier services, or electronically, to avoid physical contact with clients.
The Registrar-General, CAC, Garba Abubakar, said this while reacting to issues that led to a protest by some aggrieved customers at the corporate headquarters of the commission in Abuja.
Lawyers had, on Thursday, gathered at the CAC building in Abuja, lamenting the introduction of new processes on company registration.
They said as a result of the physical distancing policy, additional cost had been introduced by the commission for dispatching the documents.
The additional cost, they stated, would now be borne by the accredited user, who in turn bills the customer.
This, they argued, would definitely have a negative impact on the ease of doing business, as the timeframe for conclusion of registration would now be extended.
But the CAC boss told journalists that since the lockdown, put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19, was eased by the Federal Government, the commission had been overwhelmed with clients.
This, he noted, had forced the management to take a drastic decision, in compliance with COVID-19 protocols, to stop the spread of the virus.
He said, “We are a responsible institution. We have to abide by government directives. We cannot continue with this crowd in this place and some things have to give way.
“What we have done is to insist that, from tomorrow, all new certificates will be sent through courier companies and the customers will bear the cost because they are paying for transport or buying fuel to drive themselves to this place. They can as well pay the cost of delivery. From 10th August, every other process will be done by mailing.”
The Registrar-General, who noted that only skeletal service was being carried out, said the Commission would no longer allow outsiders to have access to sensitive documents as practised in the past, but that it would operate based on accepted global standard practices.
He added, “We have been forced to revisit the existing system of dealing with our customers because since the ease of lockdown, we have been allowing customers to come to the commission to do their transactions.
“But the crowd is becoming uncontrollable and it appears to be negating the COVID-19 protocol issued by the Federal Government on social distancing and maximum number of persons that should be at a place at a time.”
The RG said, “The government’s guidelines say only officers on level 14 and above should be coming to the office and they work from 8am to 2pm.
“For an organisation like ours that registers companies, maintains record of companies and also issues information to members of the public, it has been quite challenging because in the past, we had service timeline, where most of these services were delivered within 24 hours.
“With this restriction on the number of personnel and the working hours, it is impossible to meet those time lines. So we are forced to suspend those service timelines and we made that known to the customers.”
