The Special Early Retirement Programme (SERP) formed a part of the Government’s strategic initiative to transform the public sector to make it more efficient. SERP was initiated in response to concerns regarding the size of the public sector wage bill and the need for public sector pension reform.

Accordingly, SERP was designed to create incentives that would effectively increase and accelerate the retirement rate, in excess of the natural attrition rate. In accordance with statutory powers, the Minister1 responsible for Finance, in February 2017 approved the SERP for eligible employees in the public sector between the age of 50 and 59 years, to take up early retirement through an incentivized package.
The objective of this audit was to determine whether appropriate systems were in place to implement SERP in an efficient and effective manner; and whether the programme was properly managed to achieve the broad objectives and intended outcomes and benefits. Accordingly, the audit was designed to ascertain if SERP was:

• well planned,
• implemented according to plan, and
• evaluated to determine if outcomes and benefits were achieved.