PRETORIA, WEDNESDAY 13 DECEMBER 2017 – The number of staff who have resigned from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) has declined dramatically over the past four years.

According to the head of human capital and development at SARS, Mr Teboho Mokoena, the latest figures show a 40 percent decline in the number of resignations in the four financial years from 2014/14 to 2016/17.

Mr Mokoena said that in 2013/14 there were 645 resignations, followed by 607 in 2014/15, then 452 in 2015/16 and 391 resignations in 2016/17.

“This 40 percent decline in resignations is really a sign that we are retaining staff in general, but also in the areas of critical skills.”

“If we compare SARS to organisations of similar size and complexity then we have a relatively good attrition rate of 4 percent, compared to the average of 10 percent of these other organisations,” Mr Mokoena said.

According to the publication, “Annual South African HR Recruitment Trends Report – 2017”, SARS is among 59% of employers that had an annual staff turnover of less than 10%.

Mr Mokoena indicated that SARS is retaining critical and scarce skills within its core business units.

The attrition rate for audit decreased by 4.23 percent, the attrition rate for border control declined by 4.48 percent and customer service by 3.0 percent, while debt management declined by 3.5 percent.

“It is also interesting to note that information technology, which is crucial for automation of SARS paper-based processes, had the far lowest attrition in the IT industry of 0.4 percent.

“The level of academic qualifications at SARS is also very high. SARS has 200 chartered accounts, 21 staff hold a doctoral degree, 517 have a master’s degree, 821 have an honours degree and 3783 have post-matric degrees. The number of staff with a diploma or certificate is 10 223.

“The 14000 highly skilled, educated and committed SARS employees remain focused on fulfilling their revenue collection mandate to further the growth and development of our country,” Mr Mokoena said.