Registering company is a nightmare
Published:Saturday | October 4, 2014 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
The recent announcement by the Companies Office of Jamaica (COJ) that it will now be offering the services of registering a company at half the fees charged by chartered secretaries and attorneys is an indictment against this government agency.
The reasons persons have to employ the services of lawyers to register a company is that it requires a lawyer to wade through 30 pages of documents to accomplish what should be a simple task of registering a company.
We are loath to copy everything that the Americans do but seemingly never those ideas that can be useful to us. Registering a company in Florida, for instance, requires going online and filling out a one-page document, paying a fee of $20 or $30, and sending it to Tallahassee, the state capital, and your company is registered in 24 hours.
Can someone tell me when on God's earth the Government will understand that it is full time to dismantle the red tape and complex ways in which things are done across its departments and agencies?
WINSTON D. BARRETT