KUCHING, Oct 17 ― Less than 15 per cent of Employees Provident Fund (EPF) members in Sarawak have sufficient savings for them to retire comfortably upon reaching the age of 60.
EPF regional director for Sarawak, Aminuddin Abdul Aziz, said as of September 30 this year, only 111,782 of the total 816,328 EPF contributors met the ‘Basic Savings’ achievement.
The benchmark used by EPF to determine this achievement by age is RM240,000, which serves as the minimum target upon reaching the age of 55. This sum translates into RM1,000 per month of over a 20-year period post-retirement.
In view of this, he said EPF Sarawak was placing emphasis on three focus areas: ‘Adequacy, Coverage and Customer Experience’ (ACE).
“We want to ensure that Sarawakians would have enough savings for retirement,” he said during the ‘EPF High Tea Session with the Media’ here yesterday.
Aminuddin said under the ‘Coverage’ focus area, EPF had set the goal of achieving maximum participation of all Sarawakians in the informal sector to have ‘old age savings’.
“A large majority of our contributors are from the formal sector, which means that they have contributions based on their monthly salaries.
“But the number of people in the informal sector is also going up, and we want to encourage these people such as fishermen, entrepreneurs and so on, to contribute and build long-term savings with EPF,” he said.
On the ‘Customer Experience’ focus area, he said the aim was to provide effective self-service channels and superior customer service to all EPF members in Sarawak.
“We have seven branches across Sarawak located in Kuching, Miri, Sibu, Bintulu, Sri Aman, Sarikei and Limbang.
“At the same time, we also have three EPF Mobile Trucks (one each in Kuching, Sibu and Bintulu) that operate in four different locations, Mondays to Thursdays every week.
“By having our presence at these 19 locations, we hope to facilitate new customer’s experience to Sarawakians,” he said.
He added that EPF members could also carry out transactions via its i-Akaun app, aimed at elevating customer’s experience by combining cutting-edge technology and informative articles to enhance financial knowledge.
EPF deputy regional director for Sarawak Chia Swee Choo, EPF head of corporate affairs department Muhammad Shuhaili Mohd Shafik, and corporate affairs department manager Shahimah Shaharuddin, also attended the session. ― Borneo Post
