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Allowing EPF withdrawals would make the retirement fund miss the opportunity to invest in high-quality assets with low valuations as well, MTUC said.
KUCHING (November 18): The Malaysia Sarawak Trade Union Congress (MTUC Sarawak) has warned Sarawak workers who wish to withdraw money from their Employee Provident Fund (EPF) Account 1 not to do so.
MTUC Sarawak said that EPF cannot be a “source of income” to compensate for what they called the insufficiency and inability of the government to provide assistance to the millions of working poor, especially in the private sector.
“We shouldn’t sacrifice our retirement savings for immediate gratification. What is damning is that those who need withdrawals most don’t even have sufficient funds in their accounts, ”MTUC Sarawak Secretary Andrew Lo said in a statement today.
In Lo’s view, allowing EPF withdrawals would make the retirement fund miss the opportunity to invest in high-quality assets with low valuations as well.
Apart from that, Lo also said that the insufficient funds in Account 1 of many taxpayers, as recently highlighted by Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz, was an indictment against the government’s low-wage policy for the past 60 years.
“This is a shameful and damning indictment of the government’s low-wage policy for the past 60 years. In most countries, people get rich before they grow old. Malaysians get old before we get rich, ”he said.
Lo’s comments come in the wake of reports that EPF will have to liquidate its assets and rebalance its portfolio to make billions of ringgit available to taxpayers who need funds to lessen the financial turmoil caused by the Covid pandemic. 19.
This was despite MTUC National Vice President Mohd Effendy Abdul Ghani previously saying that he welcomed the government’s move to allow withdrawals of RM 500 per month for one year.
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