Each country has their own set of systems of employee deduction from the salary and it’s kept in a special account for various purposes such as housing, medical and retirement.
In Singapore, it’s called CPF contribution and in Malaysia, it’s called EPF which stands for Employee Provident Fund. Both work similarly in which employees have a certain percentage of the month’s salary deducted and contributed to the EPF account and the employer contributes a certain percentage as well.
For the EPF program, an employee can contribute 12 per cent or more of his salary while in the CPF program an employee can contribute a fixed 20 per cent of his/her salary (varies for different age groups)
Usually, for EPF, 40 per cent of the total funds cannot be utilised until the date of the account holder’s retirement.
EPF Withdrawal
The EPF said on March 16 that applications for the withdrawal option will be accessible to members under the age of 55 from April 1 to 30, with payments beginning on April 20.
Since the news broke, queues have been since at various KWSP/EPF offices around Malaysia and some of them are even frustrated as the website for the application of the withdrawal has crashed due to overwhelming traffic.
The Star (Malaysian Media) reported that long queues were seen in various branches in Kuala Lumpur, Shan Alam and Kuching.