PAIA Manual
The law lets you ask a company for a record it holds. This says what we hold, how to ask for it, and what happens next.
The manual itself
Signed, 13 pages, in the form the Information Regulator requires. This is the document that counts. The rest of this page is a plain-language guide to what is in it.
1. What this is
The Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000 — PAIA — gives every person the right to ask for a record held by a private company, where that record is needed to exercise or protect a right. Section 51 of that Act requires the company to publish a manual explaining what it holds and how to ask. This is ours.
, registration number , trading as , is a private body as defined in PAIA. The manual is lodged with the Information Regulator and is available here free of charge, by email on request, and for inspection at our registered office during business hours.
Asking is not the same as receiving. PAIA sets out grounds on which access must or may be refused — someone else's privacy, someone else's commercial information, information given to us in confidence. Those grounds are in section 11 of the manual, and if we refuse you we have to tell you which one we relied on and what you can do about it.
2. Who to write to
| Head of the private body and Information Officer | , Director |
|---|---|
| Address | |
| Telephone | |
| Website |
We have not appointed a Deputy Information Officer. The company is small enough that every request is dealt with by the person named above.
3. How to ask for a record
A request has to be made on the prescribed form — Form 2, Request for Access to Record of Private Body, under Regulation 7. You can download it from the Information Regulator at inforegulator.org.za, or ask us and we will send it to you.
Send the completed form to the address or email above. It must:
- give us enough detail to work out which record you want, and who you are;
- say in what form you would like access;
- give an address or email address in South Africa where we can reply;
- identify the right you are trying to exercise or protect, and explain why you need the record in order to do it;
- include proof of your authority, if you are asking on somebody else's behalf; and
- be accompanied by the request fee, where one is payable.
We will decide and tell you within 30 days. That can be extended once, by not more than another 30 days, in the circumstances PAIA allows — and if we extend it we have to tell you in writing, and why.
4. What it costs
Two kinds of fee can apply: a request fee, payable when you lodge the request, and an access fee for the work of finding and copying, payable before we hand anything over.
| Request fee, on lodging a request | R140.00 |
|---|---|
| Photocopy or printed copy, per A4 page or part of one | R2.00 |
| Copy on disc, where you provide the disc | R40.00 |
| Copy on disc, where we provide it | R60.00 |
| Search and preparation, excluding the first hour | R145.00 per hour or part of an hour, to a maximum of R435.00 |
| Deposit, where we reasonably expect more than six hours of work | One third of the access fee |
If you are asking for your own personal information, you pay no request fee, and you are not charged for the first hour of searching.
These are the fees prescribed by the Regulations. If the prescribed fees change, the ones in force on the day you ask are the ones that apply, whatever this page says.
5. What you can have without asking
Some records are published and free, and you do not need PAIA or a form or a fee to get them. We have given formal notice of these under section 52 of the Act — that notice is Annexure A to the manual.
| The public pages of | Freely available at any time |
|---|---|
| The Privacy Notice | On this site; emailed on request |
| The Terms of Use | On this site; emailed on request |
| This PAIA Manual | On this site; emailed on request |
| Our marketing material | On this site and on our public social media pages |
A wedding website made by a couple is that couple's own content, not ours. Whether it is visible, and to whom, is controlled by them. It is not a record automatically available under this section.
6. Your own personal information
If what you actually want is your own information — what we hold about you, or to have it corrected or deleted — that is POPIA rather than PAIA, and it is quicker. The Privacy Notice explains how, and if you have an account you can download everything in it or delete the lot yourself, from inside the app, without asking anybody.
7. If you are unhappy with our decision
There is no internal appeal against the decision of the head of a private body. If you are dissatisfied with our decision, or we fail to decide at all, you may complain to the Information Regulator on the prescribed form, or apply to a court under section 78 of PAIA. You may also complain to the Regulator under section 74 of POPIA if you believe we have interfered with the protection of your personal information.
Information Regulator (South Africa)
JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2001
P.O. Box 31533, Braamfontein, Johannesburg, 2017
Telephone 010 023 5200 · Toll free 0800 017 160
enquiries@inforegulator.org.za ·
inforegulator.org.za
8. Keeping this current
The manual is reviewed at least once a year, and whenever what we do or how to reach us changes in a way that matters. The current version is the one published here and lodged with the Regulator; earlier versions are kept by the Information Officer.