The Department also did not achieve one of its most important targets that of reducing its vacancy rate to 12 per cent. Instead, its vacancy rate increased to 13.4 per cent during the 2011/12 financial year. This was a concern considering that in some of its programmes where the Department did not achieve its targets, lack of capacity was cited as a reason. The Department cited delays in qualification verification by the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), as well as citizenship and criminal checks by the State Security Agency (SSA) as reasons for the inability to fill vacancies. The Department failed to organise at least 8 per cent of farmers into producer associations. This was also an arbitrary target as the Department did not explain which category of farmers were going to be organised into producer organisations and what was the total number of those farmers on which 8 per cent was based. Commercial farmers, whether developing or developed, were already affiliated to producer organisations, some of which were working with subsistence farmers.