Why does EPF need to dispose its assets to get cash upfront?

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Recently the rebel government of Muhyiddin Yassin had agreed to allow depositors to withdraw their savings in the Account 1 partially from the Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) after much pressure from both side of the political divide during the ongoing parliamentary sitting which is now debating on the allocations for the Budget 2021.

However, what came to a grave surprise is, the EPF made a public statement informing the public that they need to liquidate much of its assets and rebalance their investment portfolios in order to obtain cash upfront to facilitate withdrawals from depositors.

Unfortunately it comes into a big question mark here, why does EPF need to dispose off its assets in order to obtain the much needed cash in order to fund the depositors' withdrawal? Where has the EPF's cash reserves or reserve funds gone to? How does EPF actually manage the entire portfolios in the group which serves as a retirement fund for majority of the workers in this country?

Liquidating the assets in such an urgent manner to obtain a huge cash upfront is definitely a big question mark here on why EPF has to resort to such measures. We want to know if EPF is managing the public savings prudently, professionally and ensuring that all retirees get to receive their hard earned savings in event they cease working in the near future.

Do not tell us that EPF cannot make public of its accounts or investment portfolios in order to face public scrutiny. There is no such thing of EPF accounts and reports are all subject to Official Secrets Act 1972 (OSA). If the finance minister or any officials from the EPF were to claim that all EPF financial activities are currently under the OSA jurisdiction, then the parliament will need to step in to verify such situation.

Furthermore, we also urge the public to lodge police reports nationwide against the management of EPF and finance ministry in order to seek for a thorough investigation on EPF over its financial activities.

Then, we also urge the parliamentary Public Accounts Commuttee (PAC) to initiate a widespread investigation into EPF, its management and investment teams in order to get into the bottom of their activities to ensure any possible non-compliant or any kinds of transactions which are deemed to be against the interests of the public.

We view EPF with grave suspicion when the fund manager announced that they need to obtain an upfront cash by disposing off its assets in order to support public withdrawals nationwide.

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