Registrar of Companies, Jemima Oware, says professional bodies are required to register their organisations and memberships with the Registrar of Companies to remain a legally recognized professional body.

According to her, it is a constitutional requirement that must be adhered to but is often overlooked.

She noted that currently, while the Registrar of Companies has 85 professional bodies on its register, only 10 have renewed their status on the register.

“We came to meet this as far back as 1963 when we started registering various bodies. And the professional bodies was one of them, and so it just clearly shows you that there wasn’t much light on that particular area.

“And the law is very clear, it’s NRCD 147, we are supposed to register professional bodies in Ghana, you must have about 50 members and they should all professionals. That means, you must be giving them certificates before you even come register them with us. Now once you bring them and register them, you’re supposed to be coming with the list of the academic qualifications of your professionals,” she said on JoyNews’ PM Express Business Edition.

She explained that the failure to register or renew your status on the register after expiration means that your professional body is no longer recognized as such by the law.

“Not only that, the law is very clear that if we do not register you and renew your membership of that professional body, it lapses. Your whole professional body plus you professionals on my register, it lapses.

“And this is something that we hadn’t really put much emphasis on. It’s not the registrar of company stretching the mandate, it’s within the law. And you’re supposed to do this before the end of January of every particular year,” she said.

She noted that when professional bodies undergo name changes, acquire new membership, or lose membership, their executives ought to come to renew their status on the register.

“So all these professional bodies that have the register, when we had the meeting it turned out some hadn’t even registered with us as professional bodies  and were using the name, some had changed their names and they had not updated us, some had dead professionals on our register and had not informed us about it. So every year, the duty of the professional bodies, the executives, is to bring a list of professionals in good standing,” she said.

She added that “So the mandate to oversee the activities of your professionals, the code of ethics and all that, that lies with your professional body not us, but to give you authenticity and legality as a professional, you need to come to us.

And that is why we’re saying that you need to pay 30 cedis for each professional. So as you’re coming to us with your constitution and your charter and your code of ethics, and your list of professionals with their academic qualifications – I don’t really need your certificates but you should list it for us – we’ll enter it into our register, every year before the end of January come back and update us whether the name is still the same, whether you’ve moved offices, whether the professionals have left.

“If you don’t do that and we don’t update the professionals in our register, the law is very clear it lapses. Lapses means you are not recognized as a professional.”