Litigation: Get the Gazette out, court orders state printers

The Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) has ordered the Government Printing Works (GPW) – beset by technical glitches that affected the publishing of legal notices in the Government Gazette – to print the publications every Friday without interruption or delay. A Business Day report says the court ruled that all requests for quotations and publications of notices dealing with the administration of estates, insolvencies, company notices, public auctions, and registration of political parties, among others, should be attended to promptly. The GPW experienced a technical glitch in April that affected the printing of gazettes and legal notices.

In May, Parliament’s Home Affairs Portfolio Committee said it had recommended an investigation into the loss of data after a system crash at the GPW. René Bekker, COO of the SA Restructuring and Insolvency Practitioners Association (Sapira), said: ‘We have been dealing with this service failure from the GPW for four months now. The advertisement of court orders, meetings of creditors, sale of business transactions in terms of Section 34 (of the Insolvency Act), and the confirmation of liquidation and distribution accounts have not appeared timeously, resulting in huge pecuniary losses for our members.’ Bekker, who brought the urgent court application on behalf of Sapira, said the application followed numerous attempts by the association to ascertain issues surrounding the ‘ongoing service failure of prompt and timely publications in the Gazette’.