PAIA Manual

Acronyms used in this manual

• PAIA: Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000
• POPIA: Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013
• Regulator: the Information Regulator of South Africa
• IO: Information Officer
• “We”, “us”: Decluttering Solutions (Pty) Ltd, trading as Decluttering

Purpose of this manual

This manual helps you to:

• know what kinds of records we hold;
• see which records are available without a formal request;
• make a request for access to a record, and know what it may cost;
• know the grounds on which a request may be refused, and what you can do if it is; and
• understand how we process personal information, whom we share it with, and how we keep it secure.

Decluttering is an online marketplace at decluttering.co.za where people in South Africa buy and sell goods, most of them second-hand. Buyers pay sellers directly.

Contact details

Head of the private body and Information Officer

The head of Decluttering Solutions (Pty) Ltd for the purposes of PAIA is its Information Officer, Petrus Johannes van Vuuren (Johan van Vuuren). His registration as Information Officer with the Information Regulator is in progress.

Deputy Information Officer

We have not appointed a Deputy Information Officer. The Information Officer deals with every request.

Contact details for requests

Company

Decluttering Solutions (Pty) Ltd, trading as Decluttering

Registration number

2026/697223/07

Information Officer

Petrus Johannes van Vuuren (Johan van Vuuren)

Physical address

177 Nkwe RoadTierpoort0056

Phone

078 902 5258

Email

support@decluttering.co.za

Website

decluttering.co.za

Please send requests for records and questions about this manual to support@decluttering.co.za, marked for the attention of the Information Officer.

The Information Regulator’s guide to PAIA

The Information Regulator has published a guide on how to use PAIA and POPIA (the “Guide”), as section 10 of PAIA requires. The Guide explains, among other things, the purpose of PAIA and POPIA, how to request a record from a public or private body, the help available from Information Officers, the fees payable, and the remedies available if a request is refused.

The Information Regulator publishes the Guide in each of the official languages. You can get it:

• from the Information Regulator’s website, on its PAIA guidelines page at inforegulator.org.za/paia-guidelines;
• from the Information Regulator’s offices; and
• from us: email us and we will send you a copy, free of charge, in the official language you ask for.

The Information Regulator’s contact details are:

• Address: Woodmead North Office Park, 54 Maxwell Drive, Woodmead, Johannesburg, 2191
• Phone: 010 023 5200, or toll-free 0800 017 160
• General enquiries: enquiries@inforegulator.org.za
• PAIA complaints: PAIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za
• Website: inforegulator.org.za

Records available without a request

We have not published a notice under section 52 of PAIA. The following are available on our website, free of charge, without a request:

• our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Cookie Notice;
• this PAIA manual; and
• public listings, public seller shop pages and published reviews.

Users can also see their own account records, listings, orders, messages, offers, disputes, reviews and fee invoices by signing in.

Records kept under other laws

We keep records as required by the laws below, as far as each one applies to us. This list is not complete: other laws may also require us to keep records.

• Companies Act 71 of 2008
• Income Tax Act 58 of 1962
• Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011
• Value-Added Tax Act 89 of 1991
• Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002
• Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008
• Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013
• Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000
• Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 (if we have employees)
• Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 (if we have employees)
• Unemployment Insurance Act 63 of 2001 (if we have employees)
• Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act 130 of 1993 (if we have employees)

Subjects and categories of records we hold

We hold records on the subjects below. Listing a category does not mean that access to its records will be given: every request is considered under PAIA, and some records may be refused on the grounds PAIA sets out.

How to request a record

Making a request

• Use Form 2 (“Request for access to record”) prescribed under the PAIA regulations. It is available from the Information Regulator’s website, or from us on request.
• Send it to the Information Officer by email, to support@decluttering.co.za. You may also deliver it to our physical address, shown above. Please phone us first to arrange a time, so that someone is there to receive it.
• Give enough detail for us to identify the record and you. Say how you want access (for example a copy or an inspection) and how we should contact you.
• You must say which right you want to exercise or protect, and explain why the record is needed for that. You do not need to do this if you are asking for your own personal information.
• If you are asking on behalf of someone else, include proof that you may act for them.
• If you cannot read or write, or have a disability, you may make the request orally, and we will help you.

Fees

Fees are set by the PAIA Regulations, 2021, not by us. The Information Regulator publishes the current fees for private bodies on its PAIA fees page. At the date of this manual they include:

• a request fee of R140, payable before we process your request. You do not pay it if you are asking for your own personal information;
• if access is granted, an access fee: for example R2 for each printed or copied A4 page, and R145 for each hour (or part of an hour) of searching for and preparing the record after the first hour, up to R435 in total;
• a deposit of one third of the access fee, if searching for and preparing the record will take more than six hours; and
• the actual cost of postage or electronic transfer, if any.

If the Regulations change, the new fees apply. We will tell you what you must pay before we do any work that costs money.

Our decision

• We will decide within 30 days after receiving a complete request, and tell you our decision and the reasons. We may extend this once, by up to 30 more days, in the cases PAIA allows. We will tell you if we do.
• We may refuse access on the grounds set out in Chapter 4 of Part 3 of PAIA. Among them: protecting other people’s personal information, commercial information of third parties or of ours, confidential information, the safety of individuals and property, and legally privileged records.
• If we do not reply within the time allowed, the request is treated as refused.

If you are not satisfied

We have no internal appeal procedure. If you are unhappy with our decision, or with a fee or extension, you may complain to the Information Regulator, or apply to a court, within 180 days of our decision.

How we process personal information

Our Privacy Policy gives full details. In summary:

Purposes of processing

• running user accounts and signing users in;
• verifying the identity of sellers, and of buyers who choose to verify;
• publishing and checking listings;
• running orders between buyers and sellers, including showing a buyer the seller’s bank details so they can pay the seller directly (we do not receive or hold buyers’ money);
• checking that the bank details a seller gives us are in that seller’s name, or in the name of their registered business on Decluttering;
• invoicing sellers for our fees;
• letting users message each other and make offers, with contact details hidden;
• handling disputes, reports and reviews;
• preventing fraud and abuse, and keeping the platform secure;
• offering optional AI listing drafts;
• meeting legal, tax and regulatory obligations; and
• managing our suppliers and our company.

Categories of data subjects and their personal information

Recipients

• other users, only as far as a sale needs (for example, the buyer of an accepted order sees the seller’s bank details);
• our service providers: Didit (identity verification), Anthropic (AI, including reading sellers’ bank confirmation letters), Resend (email), Shiplogic (courier prices from The Courier Guy), Sentry (error tracking), Cloudflare (off-site backups) and our hosting provider;
• authorities such as the police, courts and regulators, when the law requires it; and
• our professional advisers.

Planned transfers outside South Africa

Some service providers process or store personal information outside South Africa: Anthropic, Resend and Google in the United States; Sentry in the United States or the European Union; Didit in the European Union (Ireland); and Cloudflare in countries outside South Africa. We send personal information outside South Africa only as section 72 of POPIA allows, as explained in our Privacy Policy.

Security measures

• ID numbers and bank account numbers are encrypted in our database;
• duplicate accounts are detected by comparing keyed one-way hashes, not readable numbers;
• database access rules limit each user to their own private records, and staff access to identity records is logged;
• a seller’s bank details are shown only to the buyer of an accepted, open order, and each time is logged;
• there are no passwords to steal: sign-in uses one-time codes that expire after 10 minutes, or Google;
• we take no card payments and hold no card details, and we do not hold buyers’ money;
• contact details are hidden in messages between users; and
• the website uses encrypted (HTTPS) connections.

Availability and updating of this manual

This manual is available free of charge on our website at decluttering.co.za/paia. You can ask us for a copy by email, free of charge. A fee may be charged for a printed copy, as prescribed.

We will update this manual when our information changes. The “Last updated” line at the top shows the current version.