Dr Toh: PAP is using people’s savings & telling them how to spend their savings

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

I would like to put this question to the Minister for Health or the Minister for Labour who is responsible for administering the CPF. What would this percentage be if the withdrawal age were raised to 60 or 65? Of this amount that was withdrawn, two-thirds were spent on buying houses, mainly HDB flats. So only one-third was spent on retirement…

What is irksome is this: that the Government is using people’s savings and telling them how to spend their savings. That is the nub of the problem…
We need to clearly define the boundaries within which the CPF will be used for retirement. We must spell that out. You just cannot say, “Let us raise the withdrawal age to 60 or 65.” It must be 60. It must be 65. Now, at which age? This Paper does not contain any calculation at all to say what will happen if it is withdrawn at 60, or what will happen if it is withdrawn at 65…

I think fundamental principles are being breached. The fundamental principle is this. The CPF is really a fixed deposit or a loan to Government, which can be redeemed at a fixed date when the contributor is 55 years old. If I were to put this sum of money in a commercial bank and, on the due date I go to the bank to withdraw the money, the manager says, “i am sorry, Dr Toh, you will have to come next year”, there will be a run on the bank! It is as simple as this, that the CPF has lost its credibility, the management of it. This is fundamental. You were taken by surprise by Medisave. Then they say, “6% of your Special Account will be kept for Medisave and you cannot withdraw that, even if you were to die.”

Now I ask the Minister for Health, and I asked him last time, whether his word is binding on future Ministers. Neither will the Minister for Labour’s word be binding on future Ministers for Labour. Can any Government or any Minister guarantee that in future years a law will not be passed that will say, “All Special Accounts in the CPF cannot be withdrawn until you die”? Your Special Account now is up to 10%; 6% Medisave, 4% for what? So unless you use the CPF to buy property, your money is in real danger of being kept under lock and key by others, not under your own lock and key. This is the nub of the problem – the credibility of the management, gradual encroachment into the purpose of the CPF which was instituted really to provide for retirement…

http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014...pf-withdrawal/


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