Licenced Electrical Contractor

In South Africa, electrical contractors are licensed through the ECB – the Department of Labour’s Electrical Compliance Board. Licensed electrical contractors must renew their licensing on a yearly basis and only a licensed contractor can issue a Certificate of Compliance. A Certificate of Compliance is a certificate that is required when a house or property is sold to indicate that the electrical wiring of the house complies with electrical standards.

This is all very well, but unfortunately things are not so straight forward!
When a home owner buys a house he gets the COC with the sale but that Certificate is only valid for a short while, until the first new installation of plugs, wires, lights, geysers, stoves or any other electrical apparatus – then the old COC becomes invalid and a new one must be issued by the electrician doing the job.

Inevitably however, either the home owner does the job himself, or he contracts in an Electrician (or someone that calls himself an Electrician) that is not licensed and cannot supply a Certificate of Compliance due to the fact that he might have decided to go for a “cheap” option and it is normally your fly-by-night companies or juniors who are trying to enter the market who price themselves cheaply.

This then causes problems later on down the road, both for the home owner as well as the poor Electrical Contractor who is then contacted to come and provide a Certificate of Compliance. If the Electrical Contractor does his job properly, he will have to do a complete assessment of the work done – down to removing all the plug covers and tracing all the wiring done. This could take a long time and be a complex and involved job. If he does find any non-compliance issues which could be likely if the job was done by a non-licensed ‘electrician’ he would have to fix this first before issuing the certificate – this can lead to quite a high cost for the home owner.

Before you get just anyone to do your electrical work and maybe pay for it twice in the end, rather get a Licensed Electrical Contractor to do it right the first time round.

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