Introduction
1.1 The purpose of this South Africa Addendum to the GE Privacy Policy (“Addendum”) is to explain how we collect, use, disclose and store personal information, in accordance with the requirements of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (“POPIA”) in South Africa.
This Addendum will apply to all personal information (“PI”), of both natural and juristic persons, processed by GE Corporate or Business Units for the purposes of their business activities in South Africa or by or for a responsible party where the responsible party is domiciled in South Africa.
1.2 For persons falling within the scope of the POPIA for whom GE must collect and process certain PI about you in order to facilitate your employment with GE. This PI will be handled in accordance with the GE Candidate Privacy Notice [ Candidate Privacy Notice | General Electric] and the Employment Data Protection Standards [Employment Data Protection Standards | Inside Integrity (ge.com)]. This PI may come directly from you or from other sources, including external sources. GE’s collection and processing of your PI is subject to POPIA.
1.3 For purposes of this Addendum “Processing” means any operation or activity or any set of operations, whether or not by automatic means, concerning Personal Information, including, but not limited to –
1.3.1 the collection, receipt, recording, organization, collation, storage, updating or modification, retrieval, alteration, consultation or use;
1.3.2 dissemination by means of transmission, distribution or making available in any other form; or
1.3.3 merging, linking as well as restriction, degradation, erasure or destruction of information, and “Process” has the corresponding meaning.
1.4 This Addendum must be read together with the General Electric Company Global Privacy Policy GE Privacy Policy | General Electric, the Candidate Notice and the Employment Data Protection Standards and where there are differences between these standards and this Addendum, the provisions set out in this Addendum will apply in South Africa and to all PI Processed in South Africa.
2. GE’s Collection and Processing of Special Personal Information
2.1 In some cases, GE might also collect and process special personal information (“SPI”) about you. SPI includes information related to your religious or philosophical beliefs, race or ethnic origin, trade union membership,political persuasion, health or sex life, biometrics or criminal behaviour.
2.2 GE will only collect SPI for specific purposes such as:
- Collecting health related information to provide health benefits or accommodate a disability;
- Monitoring safety, industrial hygiene and exposures in our facilities;
- Collecting diversity-related information (such as gender and race) to comply with legal obligations and internal policies relating to diversity and non-discrimination; or
- Collecting biometric information for security purposes or to facilitate your access to GE’s systems.
2.3 Generally, and subject to the above purposes, GE’s collection and processing of such SPI will be conducted based on legitimate interest, fulfilment of a contract or with your consent and upon disclosure of the purposes for which such SPI is processed. However, your SPI may also be processed if GE is required to do so to comply with obligations imposed on it by law, or for making or defending legal claims.
3. Your Rights to Your PI
3.1 As a data subject whose PI is collected in South Africa you have a number of rights in relation to your PI. You may, amongst others:
- request GE to confirm whether or not we hold any of your PI;
- request us to amend incorrect or incomplete PI;
- object to, or request GE to stop, processing your PI, for example where the processing of your PI is no longer necessary;
- request us to erase your PI;
- where our processing of your PI is based solely on your consent, you may withdraw that consent; or
- receive from us the PI we hold about you, which you have provided to us, including for the purpose of you transmitting that PI to another responsible party.
3.2 Please note that the above rights are not absolute, and GE is entitled to refuse requests where exceptions apply.
4. Storage and management of Personal Information
4.1 GE will take reasonably practicable steps to ensure that all PI collected is complete, accurate and not misleading, having regard to the purpose for which the PI is being Processed.
4.2 GE will take all reasonably practicable steps to ensure that all PI remains confidential and is not distributed to unauthorised third parties.
4.3 Employees’ PI will only be made internally available within GE to specifically authorised users, who will only have access to such PI as is required for the fulfilment of their tasks, in accordance with the GE Employee Data Protection Standards [Employment Data Protection Standards | Inside Integrity (ge.com)]
5. Retention of personal information
5.1 GE will only keep your PI for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the relevant purposes set out in this Addendum and in order to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
5.2 After we are no longer authorised to retain the PI, GE will ensure that it is destroyed, deleted and/or de-identified in a manner that prevents its reconstruction in an intelligible form.
6. Requests, queries, complaints or comments
6.1 If you would like us to destroy or delete any of your PI please email us at: [General Inquiry | General Electric].
6.2 If you would like us to correct any of your PI or if you have any further requests, questions, complaints or comments about this Notice or the processing of your PI or you would like to ask us whether we are processing any your PI or exercise any of your rights set out in this Notice, please feel free to contact us at:
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: +27 (83) 6283086
Information Officer: David Colville
6.3 If you are unsatisfied with the manner in which we address any complaint regarding the processing of PI, you may contact the Information Regulator of South Africa:
6.3.1 Website: https://inforegulator.org.za/contact-us/
6.3.2 Email: [email protected]
6.3.3 Telephone: 012 406 4818
6.4 If you want to learn more about your rights under the POPIA, you can visit the Information Regulator’s page on data protection at: https://inforegulator.org.za/portal/.