Rejected by STRAITS TIMES..on CPF Issues again

Thank you for writing to us. We do appreciate your making the effort. We receive 70 letters on average each day. Limited space means we can publish only about a dozen every weekday. This means having to make often-difficult editorial judgments on which letters to publish. We regret we are unable to publish your letter, and hope you will appreciate the constraints on space we face every day. We hope you will continue taking an interest in the Forum Page.

Yours sincerely
Ms Noor Aizafor
Forum Editor
The Straits Times"

Nick Pedro
16/11/2006 08:13 AM

To:stforum@sph.com.sg

Subject:FORUM

To : STRAITS TIMES, Forum

Attn: The Editor

I would like to give my feedback on the CPF issue following yesterdays’ issue in Voices by Soh Yu Seng. I am equally surprised that union organizations are agreeable to CPF being sustained as it is. Although this may affect a be a small percentage of the working force, they do not want to marginalize this portion of workers. Many of us have bought flats based on the 40 per cent CPF contributions and took loans for 25 years. Now we are short of contributions to cover the impending monthly installments.The employers pay only 13 per cent, whereas the employee’s contribution is at 20 per cent. I would also like to reiterate, unless we may have forgotten, the CPF is for sole to ensure we have enough funds to see us through and not for the purpose of buying flats. We end up using that bulk of the CPF for purchasing a house and having none minimal from the CPF for food, medical, transportation, bills in later years. I hope that the intention is not for us to sell our flats in order to weed out the financial woes. This will only be done on a last resort. Trust me this amount would diminish in a very short time, too and than what.I would seriously urge that we put a check with CPF board on the numbers of its members who are in arrears and have no or minimum contributions in their ordinary account be executed, in order to see the trend at this stage. We need to be represented and our plights heard.I only wish that the CPF Board could have invested our special account savings on insurance that will yield better revenue upon retirement.In view of the above I feel that there is a need to have the CPF reinstated to its original 50 or 40 per cent that we enjoyed previously in good times, when there is visible sign of growth. At least we can level again when there is a downfall.

Thank you and regards,