UPDATES:
Please read the comment received this afternoon @ 12:58pm at the bottom of this article (click on the comment section) from Nik Affendi, the Senior Manager, EPF Public Relations. In short, the rumours and the emails circulated on cyber space is UNTRUE!!
Please delete immediately any such emails if you received and spread the TRUTH to all.
To Nik, thank you for the quick & swift respond.
Thank you
*****************************************************************************
.
There was an email circulating on cyber space of an EPF (Employees Provident Fund or KWSP) scam involving Account II. Apparently, the government in the budget 2008 had allowed the withdraw of Account II to service the monthly housing loan repayment to ease the burden of the public. None of those that I knew had ever withdrew any funds from their EPF Account II for this purpose but I wonder if there is any truth in the email circulated.
According to the email, you only need to provide EPF, the housing loan & the installment details from your bank and the bank a/c number that EPF needed to bank the monthly withdrawal into. EPF will approve the application based on the available amount in the A/C II and compute the withdrawal period by dividing the approved amount with the monthly installment amount.
The application process takes approximately a month and the monthly payout will be paid promptly into the designated bank account!
Everything appeared to be smooth and simple but this is how the so-called alleged scam work.
Assuming there is a RM100,000 in the A/C II and the housing loan monthly installment is RM2000/mth.
EPF will approve the application of withdrawal from the A/C II of RM100,000 and bank-in (at your designated account) the RM2000/mth for the next 50mths. Everything appears to be in order BUT....... What EPF did not highlight is that when the application was approved, the TOTAL AMT from account II (RM100,000) was removed!! It appears to be transferred to an unknown a/c to effect the monthly payment from therein.The impact to the member are as follows :
1. You just lost all the balance RM100,000 from your A/C II. Assuming the KWSP Dividend is 4%, you will lose RM4,000 in dividend during the 1st year. Based on the above example you will lose RM10,000 over the 50 months period!
2. There is no statement of account for the amount approved vs. amount paid, hence you would need to keep the monthly payment voucher to reconcile against the approved amount over the 50months period to ensure there is no missing amount!
Assuming there are 100,000 members who innocently applied for the EPF Account II withdrawal to pay their monthly housing loan and based on the above example, EPF would have cheated the members of 100,000 X RM10,000 = RM1,000,000,000 (that ' s RM1 BILLION) over the period!
Furthermore, if you discovered the removal of the whole sum in the Account II, and intend to stop the plan, EPF would not allow any cancellation of the plan until for at least a minimum of 1 year. That would mean, once the application is approved, based on the above example, you would have lost RM4,000. 100,000 members would have lost 100,000 X RM4,000 = RM400,000,000 (RM400 MILLION) in One Year!!!
I hope this is not true and part of the opposition's dirty technique to discredit the Government in which case, the government should explain the mechanism to the public to avoid any speculations and rumours but if its true, if you are affected, please raise the issue with your local MP to bring it up in Parliament.
All the best....
.
