The South African Revenue Service would like to alert taxpayers who have been frustrated over the past few days in their efforts to contact the SARS Service Monitoring Office (SSMO) that their failure to reach the SSMO is due to severed telephone lines in Hatfield.
According to Telkom, a contractor working for the Gautrain project severed twelve copper cables and a 12 fibre optic cable. The copper cables ranged in size from 20 pair cables to 2400 pair cables and the damage to them has severely affected thousands of its customers in the Hatfield vicinity. Furthermore, Telkom has stated that their technical personnel are working around the clock in order to progressively restore services as expeditiously as possible and anticipates that all affected services will be fully restored by 25 May 2009.
The SARS Service Monitoring Office, which is situated in Hatfield, is an independent monitoring office to which taxpayers can turn as a last resort to highlight service failures within SARS. Both its call centre number (0860 12 12 16) and fax number (012 431 9695) were affected and are currently not working.
However, taxpayers may still email the SSMO at ssmo@sars.gov.za
SARS and the SSMO would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and hopes the SSMO will be fully operational again from Monday.
Issued by: South African Revenue Service
20 May 2009
Source: South African Revenue Service (http://www.sars.gov.za/)
