Be careful on EPF withrawal

Many people fail to understand that EPF is a retirement fund; the funds that you need after you stop working at old age. In that sense, it should only be utilized at that time for retirement purpose. There are many articles flying around on the internets saying that the government is misusing the EPF fund and thus urging the contributors to withdraw the money from EPF and invest it in various types of mutual funds permitted by EPF in order to get a better return. 

I did the same thing a few years ago and recently when I received a quarterly statement from the mutual fund company that I invested in, I was pleased to see that the fund has grown some 40% over the capital that I withdrew over the years. 40%, not so bad isn’t it but bear in mind, if the share market goes upside down due to whatsoever reasons, the fund may potentially go kaput, and that is the inherent risk of withdrawing money from EPF for investment purposes. 

Unless you are thinking that this country is going bankrupt within your lifetime, your EPF fund should be kept intact in the Institution until such time that allow you to enjoy your retirement. Even though the dividends given over the years are nothing to shout about, ranging from 3 to 6% but don’t forget the compounding effect that the fund will generate and its snowballing effect. I was especially excited to see the amount of money generated from the 6% dividend declared by EPF recently, and as the fund growing bigger with years, even at 5 to 6% dividend will churn out quite a handsome amount of money. 

Wage earners should be especially careful on the withdrawal of EPF as our savings are limited and unless you job-hopping very frequently for a better salary or getting promotions faster than normal people, you can just expect a meager of increment in your salary from year to year. Whether or not our annual increment is sufficient to cope with the inflation is another issue. 

You will notice that a lot of people still continue working after retirement not for the sake of enjoyment but because they need money due to insufficient retirement fund.

EPF declares 6% dividend

I guess EPF contributors countrywide must have been very excited about the 6% interest declared just yesterday leading to high traffic on EPF website. I was trying several times to see how much I made from the 6% dividend on my hard earn retirement fund but failed to get into my i-Akaun due to high traffic. 

6% is the highest dividend over the past 6 years and perhaps it also clear the air that the Government has misused the fund and thus not being able to pay out good dividend. At least it is better than putting our own savings into the FD which yields very poorly nowadays. 

Some say it is an election year and the government is buying votes from the ordinary wage earners. It may be true it may be not, but for the ordinary wage earners, a 6% dividend is still a good return and kudos goes to the board of EPF for their good effort. What we do not want to see is that the dividend payout is being manipulated in such a way that come next year, after the election, we get peanut for 2012.   

Debate or just another political caramah?

The highly anticipated political debate between the President of MCA and Secretary General of DAP was a bit of anti-climax in my view albeit the first political debate of such nature and intensity conducted in our country. Both LGE and CSL were merely attacking each other but failed to conduct a healthy and fruitful debate on the subject topic. It was as though putting together a DAP ceramah and MCA ceramah into a same hall with their own supporters shouting from the floor and even the questions from the participants were highly polarized into DAP supporters criticizing MCA and likewise MCA supporters trying their level best to put down DAP. 

Even the former president of MCA “was put on the stage” by LGE and CSL with his usual cynicism, very quick in bashing his former president for not being able to conduct his duty as a president and thus voted out by its members. All in all, the debate was not a debate after all and LGE stick to his script by illustrating on the progress of Penang under the rule of DAP-led Pakatan Rakyat and highlighting more on the anti-corruption agenda while CSL was attacking DAP for its inability to stop PAS from setting up an Islamic state should Pakatan takes over Putrajaya. 

Both debaters were not focusing on the topic “Is the Two-Party System Becoming a Two-Race System” but kept on attacking each other just like the usual political ceramah we often see before election. If CSL thought that LGE, after becoming the Chief Minister of Penang should carry himself like the Emperor of Shu, Liu-Bei but not his fighting cock General Zhang-Fei, he should also look at himself whether he is not reacting like Zhang-Fei. 

The fact is that when the politicians are throwing slanders at each other, they failed to see that the rakyat will always be the judge at the end of the day. 

As both of the debaters were happily shaking hands after the debate, there was no winner or loser so to speak but I was not especially disappointed with the outcome as I didn’t harbor high expectation before the debate. The debate was proclaimed to be the face-off between the two Kings of the Chinese community no doubt but these two Kings are not the “Real King” that going to change our life anyway. 

So would the Real Kings debate? 

A step backward, a step forward

Sometimes, things that happen far away can influence us to a great extent. For instance, the spat between Lois Suarez of Liverpool and Patrick Evra of Manchester United are attracting far too many mouth-watering spats among my friends who are the fans of EPL.The fact is racism is not only an issue in our country, which is multi racial and multi religions. It is also an issue in developed nations such as US, England and other EU nations. 

That’s perfectly normal in my view as human are just human, have likes and dislikes. Some people could seem to be very open-minded but deep inside fanatic. That’s why people said don’t judge a book by its cover. Even the parents may have their own blue-eyed boys or girls. The fact is that too many people are using “racism” to attack others for ulterior motives such as to gain popularity or political mileage from their own race and in the way creating unnecessary tensions and disturbing racial harmony. 

For instance, the issue involving one Chinese customer and one Malay KFC worker at ICity recently must not be perceived as racial as it was merely an issue involving dissatisfied customer and over-aggravated worker. Just let the Police do their job and prosecute the offenders and all political parties should stay away from further complicating the issue.

I have already blacklisted many restaurants or eateries at Seremban or near my work place simply because of the bad attitude of their waiter or waitress. And sometimes it is no point to quarrel with strangers that we don’t even know. They could run amok and become extremely harmful to us. 

Sometimes a step backward do not make you a loser, likewise, a step forward don’t necessarily make you a winner.

Who is telling lies?

Who is telling lies now? The finance ministry officer or Wan Shahinur of National Feedlot Corporation? Wan Shahinur was saying that his company has the right to use the RM 250 million loan for whatsoever purposes, based on 1 2007 deal it had with the Finance Ministry as long as the company repaid the interest of 2% in full. On the other hand, a senior officer from the Finance Ministry had testified to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the NFC scandal that the loan cannot be used for other purposes other than that specified, and the ministry had never received any applications from NFC to purchase any property.

I think this is the only country in the world that giving away taxpayers’ money in the form of low interest loan to the cronies of the minister so easily with no proper guidelines and monitoring putting in place thus allowing all sort of misappropriations. Despite of meeting its original objective of cutting the reliance of the country on beef imports, such hush-hush projects given to the certain individuals are only good to making them ever richer and richer. Instead of rearing cattle for the sufficient consumptions of the people, the fund was misused into buying expensive properties such as luxury condominiums in Bangsar and Singapore. Perhaps these people could have thought that they are above the laws simply because their mother or wife is holding a minister portfolio.

When we talk about corruptions and most of us will be thinking about those traffic police asking for “duit kopi” for traffic offences or immigration officers harassing the illegal immigrants and so forth. It is high time to move up a nod for our anti-corruption campaign and an effective mechanism must be put in place to more thoroughly check through the high ranking government official and ministers. If we are only good in catching the small fish but the big fish which are more harmful to the nation are let off hook simply because they are protected by the powerful politicians, then MACC is as good as any another government agencies which are serving the government rather than the people.

Kneeling cats on 100 dollar note of Renminbi

Internets allow the people to spread all sorts of things in a split second and getting responses almost instantly. Some people can quickly become a popular figure or hotly debated issue overnight just because of the postings on the YouTube, Face-book, blogs and so on. Of late, a video clip on the assault on a customer by KFC workers at I-City has gone viral but my interest is on the “kneeling cats (朝拜猫) on 100 dollar note of Renminbi” which is currently the hot topic on the internet in China.

After reading the news, I took out a 100-dollar Renminbi and it was true enough that the geometrical lines on the left and right side of the Mao Tse Dong’s portrait did resembling 2 cats kneeling and worshiping an “emperor cat”. Although the official from the Centre Bank of the People Republic of China have refuted the claim and saying that it was purely the imagination of the internet readers but it surely do not stop the millions of people in China from speculating on the kneeling cats.