8/23/2006

'preserve our rights to use our cpf'

I read the above title in the Today paper and find it amusing. There was a hot debate after Tan Keng Soon wrote an article suggesting to modify the CPF scheme and children should contribute to the CPF of their mothers. And now readers are not agreeable to this and wanted to have more control of their CPF savings. Now why is this so amusing? It is amusing because whatever CPF one has, it is well known and has already been factored into the big picture of the country. How much the people have in the CPF have been computed to make sure that they can afford to pay for HDB flats and medical cost. When people have more CPF money, property prices will be priced according to their affordability. Now that people have lesser money left in their CPF, HDB will build 2 room flats to meet their lower affordability ability. And when there are more in CPF, bigger flats will be built again. And today's paper headline has this cheerful report that Singaporeans can now afford to pay for their medical cost. These are also priced according to affordability. According to the report, if Singaporeans seek to be admitted into C and B2 wards, then they should be able to afford to pay for them through their Medisave. But the report forgot that admission into C and B2 wards is not a matter of personal choice but depended on the means testing. So much as Singaporeans may want to save some money by opting for C and B2 wards, they may not qualify and have to pay for more expensive wards because they could afford to. What does all these mean, ie affordability, is to see how much one has in the CPF and how much to price facilities and services to use up these CPF. Now the cry to preserve our right to use our CPF. Fat hope. Every organisation is thinking of how to use up your CPF. Their rights to use your CPF come first. By then they would not be much left. And the final condition, you don't have the right to decide when you can take out your cpf and how much to take out even after you retire.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

who decides when you can touch your cpf and how much you can get each time?

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

definitely not me or the contributor.