FREE SAFEHOUSE GUIDES TO ELECTRICAL REGULATIONS AND COCS ESPECIALLY FOR ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS
The SAFEhouse Association has to date published eight helpful guides for electricians, which can be found on the Association’s website and downloaded for free. One of SAFEhouse’s initiatives has been to produce and publish this series of guides, which are as far as possible in everyday language, to help distribution channels and their customers understand how the applicable products work, which regulations apply to those products and what can be done to avoid any associated risks.
Of particular interest to electrical contractors are the Guide to Regulations and the Guide to Electrical Installations: easy reference guides to the Certificate of Compliance and other industry-relevant information.
Electricity comes with its inherent risks and, to protect users, electrical products must be regulated – and this is the job of South Africa’s National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications. However, it is regrettable that – for several reasons – large numbers of sub-standard products are being offered for sale in South Africa. Because of these products’ inferior design and substandard parts, they are sold at seductive prices and expose unsuspecting users to risk of electrocution and fire. The scale of non-compliance is such that the authorities responsible for ensuring compliance are unable to adequately control the proliferation of illegal products and practices.
Honest, compliant electrical contractors are negatively affected by the widespread, illegal practice whereby unqualified and poorly qualified ‘electricians’ are employed by unscrupulous electrical ‘contractors’, who capitalise on the ignorance of end-users.
The SAFEhouse Association was established by a group of concerned organisations in the electrical industry to help overcome the risk to users. It is a non-profit association of 32 entities that, amongst other objectives, aims to bring this situation to the attention of distributors and users so that they can avoid the consequences of using sub-standard products and services.
The guides are available for downloading from SAFEhouse’s website: www.safehousesa.co.za
or on request by email from SAFEhouse at: info@safehousesa.co.za.
