RM6.5 Billion Missing From EPF? Our Money (Our Retirement Funds)

Viktor Wong

Most recently, the Felda Global Ventures Berhad (FGV) a subsidiary of the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda) under the chairmanship of a convicted money politics culprit has dropped below the issuing price for the first time ever.

Then, the prime minister who is also the Umno president Najib Razak announced strings of benefits and cash rewards to the entire nation’s Felda settlers worth billions of Ringgit in order to ease these settlers’ dissatisfaction over the losses suffered by both FGV and Felda over these years.

And while FGV and Felda has been suffering from such massive losses locally, they are now dreaming of wanting to do “big” investments in war torn regions, like Mindanao (The Philippines), Myanmar and Liberia, and some countries with unstable political and economic situations like Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Cameroon.

In this case, we would like to know what had actually happened to our money (in our retirement funds), when the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) has effectively loan more than RM6.5 billion to Felda. Can the EPF guarantee everyone of us that Felda will be repaying every cent of the money borrowed together with its interests?

We wonder where would have all those money being channelled? Two ways, that is to cover the previous and current extensive losses of FGV and while the other portion when over to the Felda settlers in a kind of benefits and cash rewards in order to ease the tensions within the Felda community nationwide.

Perhaps, if the Umno-led BN government are turning around saying that we are trying to politicising the entire issue, then they should instruct FGV, Felda and EPF to make public of all their accounts, repayments, any transactions and their agreements on regularly basis in order to prove what they had done or whatever they are doing now are genuine and within the law.

The other way is, parliamentary scrutiny on quarterly basis on all matters and businesses which involve public funds. We would be surprise of this BN government could do all these kind of transparent activities in order to convince our people. But, we are certain that these BN leader would not allow all these to be made public as there a lot to be scrutinized if all these are to be carried out.

That is why we had always been emphasizing the need of a new government in order to carry out all these reforms effectively. A government which has been ruled by the same old single coalition for more than 55 years would not be able to engineer any reforms effectively in a sudden because they have been hiding behind the curtains of power for many decades.

Until today, despite many calls from the people to make all public interests within the government machineries, businesses, investments or any other transactions accountable and transparent, we have yet to see any fullest commitment from the prime minister.

The prime minister who is also the chairman of the BN coalition had made so many promises after promises to do so, his Government Transformation Programme (GTP), all his initiation of Key Performance Index (KPIs) here and there. Where are they? But the various power abuses, mismanagement and corruption still happen in the BN and its governments.

What makes all those Najib’s so-called reforms into a rubbish dump now is even the Umno secretary-general and the party’s information chief has both admitted that corruption within its ranks in the party and governance are a norm. It concludes that these Umno leaders had already accepted the facts that corruption or corrupt practices are already something not unusual in the ruling party and the government.

So, can Najib really enforce all those reforms of his effectively from the top right down to the roots? Najib cannot implement something with effect when there are no real political will or commitment to do so.

In this case, stop wasting your time and let a new government take the place.

By Viktor Wong is a Social and Political Analyst, Director of Inter-Research And Studies (IRAS) and regularly writes political and current affairs commentaries for an online news portal. Asides, he also frequently blogs on political reforms, current affairs, education, race relations and giving various commentaries on news highlights.