Whatshot
Winning Is In Her Blood - Linda Ngcobo
Winning Is In Her Blood - Linda Ngcobo
Date: 2015-05-15
Linda is not shy to admit that juggling two youngsters and her career is not an easy task, as a director of AQRate Verification Services, Linda is making a difference to businesses seeking to obtain their BEE certification.
"I stared this business ten years ago with a colleague Brigitte Brun, I never dreamt that we would be here, receiving this recognition from my peers." Linda told The Bugle, "Today we have created jobs for 22 people, we provided endless expertise to ambitious candidates and we created employment for previously disadvantaged individuals."
Linda is frank about the BEE's somewhat uncertain reputation, however she assures me that the new legislation is here to ensure that the loopholes are closed. "The way that the BEE verification should work is, 'Your transformation, helps my transformation'. The company with a high BEE score is the company promoting transformation in South Africa."
According to the DTI's BEE Strategy Document, economic empowerment must include increasing black people's ownership and control of the economy. A significant proportion of their ownership of assets and enterprises must be a controlling interest, reflecting genuine participation in decision-making and the assumption of real risk. The emphasis on control does not detract from the role that passive ownership of assets through pension and provident funds, unit trusts and other collective investment schemes can play in BEE. But without active participation, investors have little control over the direction of investment decisions. Passive ownership of enterprises can also lead to "fronting".
By the beginning of 2004, when the BEE Act was promulgated, many sectors of the economy had drafted industry charters on BEE and transformation. While some contained scorecards loosely based on the generic scorecard contained in the DTI's Strategy Document, others were merely written undertakings of commitment to transformation.
The codes provide a standard framework for the measurement of broad-based Black Economic Empowerment across all sectors of the economy. This means that no industry will be disadvantaged over another when presenting their BEE credentials. This can occur when a stringent transformation charter is applied to one entity, while a transformation charter with far more lenient measurement criteria is applied to another. Code 000 provides guidelines for the alignment of transformation charters to be gazetted as Codes of Good Practice, and will ensure that even when different gazetted charters are applied to different entities presenting their BEE credentials, no entities will be unfairly disadvantaged because of the application of a more stringent industry charter. The intention of the Codes of Good Practice is thus to level the playing field by providing clear and comprehensive criteria for the measurement of broad-based BEE.
To find out more about how to improve your BEE scorecard contact Linda on 031 563 7788.