PETALING JAYA: Former prime minister Najib Razak has urged the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government not to set any condition for contributors to withdraw money under the Employees Provident Fund’s (EPF) i-Sinar scheme.
This comes after EPF announced that only certain people would be allowed to make withdrawals, including workers who had not contributed to EPF for at least two months and those who had suffered a minimum 30% reduction in their basic salary from March.
A second category of members whose total income has been reduced by at least 30% from March are also eligible but they have to show supporting documents to verify this.
Najib said the condition that members must have had a minimum 30% reduction in earnings was illogical, adding that it was not the government’s responsibility to assume which members were desperate enough to use the savings by setting such a term.
With this condition, an individual who used to earn RM10,000 but now earned RM7,000 would be considered eligible, while a member usually earning RM2,000 a month but who now earned RM1,600 would not be considered as affected by the pandemic, he said.
“The government’s responsibility is to make things easier for the people and to find a way to ensure their EPF savings can recover in the quickest time once the pandemic is over,” he said in a Facebook post today.
He also said members under the second category would have to wait around three months before being allowed to make withdrawals due to the various conditions, adding that they could not afford to do so.
He said members under this category could only apply for the scheme with the relevant documents from Jan 11 next year, They would then need to wait two to three weeks more before obtaining EPF’s decision on their application.
“If they’re eligible, payments will only be made at the end of the following month, which is the end of February. It’s only the start of December now,” he said, adding that many had been left desperate since October.
Najib also said the conditions would see applicants rushing to EPF offices to submit their applications when the Covid-19 pandemic was still at its peak.
He said taking away the need for documentary evidence for applications would make the process smoother and would see less congestion in EPF offices, preventing a possible “EPF Covid-19 cluster”.
“I hope the PN government will make one more improvement to the i-Sinar scheme so that there are no conditions and the waiting time for the first payments can be shortened from three months to a maximum of one month.”