Leaked talk with king contravenes law
A LEAKED conversation between a sales rep of insurance company MiWay and Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini contravened the Protection of Personal Information Act.
This was said by Information Regulator Advocate Johannes Collen Weapond yesterday.
“The clip was released to the public, which means confidential and sensitive information between a potential and contracting party was released and constitute a leak of data,” he said.
The leaked conversation starts with the sales representative addressing Zwelithini by his first name. The king then reprimands the sales rep.
Prince Thulani, on behalf of the royal family, said at the weekend it was considered an insult to the Zulu nation.
Weapond said consumers have to give companies consent to use personal information.
The onus lies on public and private bodies to show that they lawfully obtained consumers’ personal information.
“You [public or private bodies] must then prove that the information that you have in your possession is lawful and you’ve either got the information in the performance of a contract or concluding some duty which is lawful.”
Weapond said MiWay would be approached on what measures it had put in place to prevent similar incidents.
MiWay chief executive Rene Otto tweeted an apology on Friday.
“MiWay regret that our sales guy called His Excellency by his first name‚ but he obviously wasn’t aware who he was speaking to,” Otto said.
“His Excellency saw the funny side of it. We salute his humanness!”
Weapond said one of the struggles was that the law had only been partly enacted – on April 11 2014 – to establish the Information Regulator.
Parliament’s portfolio committee on justice and correctional services said on Sunday it supported Zwelithini’s decision to lay a complaint against MiWay.