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PETALING JAYA: Former Prime Minister Najib Razak has urged the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government not to set any conditions for taxpayers to withdraw money under the i-Sinar scheme from the Employee Provident Fund (EPF).
This comes after EPF announced that only certain people would be able 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 base salary as of March.
A second category of members whose total income has dropped by at least 30% since March are also eligible, but must 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 when setting that deadline.
With this condition, a person who used to earn RM 10,000 but now earned RM 7,000 would be considered eligible, while a member who normally earned RM 2,000 a month but now earned RM 1,600 would not be considered 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 that their EPF savings can be recovered in the fastest time once the pandemic is over,” he said today in a Facebook post.
He also said that members of the second category would have to wait around three months before being allowed to make withdrawals due to various conditions, adding that they could not afford it.
He said that members of this category could only request the scheme with the relevant documents from January 11 next year. They would then have to wait two to three more weeks before getting EPF’s decision on their application.
“If they are eligible, payments will only be made at the end of the following month, which is the end of February. It’s just the beginning of December now, ”he said, adding that many had been desperate since October.
Najib also said that the conditions would cause applicants to rush to EPF offices to submit their applications when the Covid-19 pandemic was still raging.
He said eliminating the need for documentary evidence for applications would ease the process and reduce congestion at EPF offices, avoiding a potential “EPF Covid-19 cluster.”
“I hope that the government of the PN 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.”
