FORMER Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak fired a salvo against his mentor-nemesis, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad after a netizen praised the former for disallowing withdrawals from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) during his tenure, even during an economic meltdown.
“I want people to understand that Dr Mahathir and I have different views when it comes EPF’s dividend to its contributors and wages for Malaysian workers, and both are related to one another,” he said, in a Facebook post.
Elaborating, Najib claimed that Dr Mahathir favoured his cronies and the capitalists, adding the latter was against workers getting higher salaries in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI).
“That is why he opposed my move to introduce the Minimum Wage Consultative Council Act 2011. During his tenure, workers’ pay hike was slow and even stunted at times.
As a result, Malaysian workers had little savings in the EPF as they were earning low salaries for years, he mentioned.
“But I was of the opinion that there no point attracting FDIs at the expense of keeping wages low, which will widen the gap between the rich and poor.
“Besides, can someone tell me which country in the world aspires to become a high-income nation by keeping its workers’ salaries low?” he queried.
EPF grew profitable in the last nine years
With that, Najib said that using the National Transformation Plan, he aimed at attracting foreign investors who were willing to offer fair wages to the people.
As a result, not only Malaysia managed to attract FDI but also increased salaries for workers, absolute poverty rate was reduced within nine years of his administration and recorded better figures under the gross national income (GNI), indicating the gap between the rich and poor was being narrowed.
“But our GNI figures went up again during Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) administration because Dr Mahathir abolished the Goods and Services tax (GST) and reduced aid under the Bantuan Rakyat 1Malaysia (BR1M) scheme,” Najib claimed.
Touching on the EPF, Najib said that Dr Mahathir did not give much opportunity to the pensions fund to make profits but preferred to use its funds to bailout his failed projects.
With that, EPF was unable to provide good dividends to its contributors from 1997 until 2003, which was the lowest at 4.5%.
“During my time, I came up with plans to allow EPF to offer better dividends to its contributors. One of it was for it to purchase 49% of PLUS Malaysia Bhd shares.
“I also allowed a land owned by the Nation Rubber Board to be sold directly to the EPF, which was turned into the multi-billion-ringgit Kwasa Damansara development project.
“EPF also got involved in the Battersea England project, which is worth billions,” Najib stated.
With EPF being financially viable, this gave him the confidence to push the Government to allow withdrawals by contributors who were badly affected by the pandemic.
“It’s because I have confidence that EPF can make profits again the future, as how it managed to become a company worth RM850 bil from RM300 within nine years,” the Pekan MP remarked. – July 6, 2021.
