The Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board has come out with its side of the story after a Singaporean’s claim that she only received a meagre amount of her late mother’s CPF savings, 31 years after her mother passed away, went viral on Facebook last week.
When 42-year-old Madam Fatimah Mohamad passed away in 1987, her only child – Madam Rahayu Mazlan – was the sole nominee for her mother’s savings since her parents had divorced and her mother did not remarry.
51-year-old housewife Madam Rahayu, who now has five children and seven grandchildren, shared a photo of a letter from CPF Board she received earlier this month, asking her to collect some leftover monies in her late mother’s CPF account.
Madam Rahayu asked on Facebook, “CPF are you trying to fool me or mock at me ???? after 31 years? Before I got kids till now I have grandkids ????♀️Dunno to be happy or angry ????,” leading many to believe that CPF took 31 years to get back to Madam Rahayu with her mother’s savings and that no interest had been accrued even after all these years.
The CPF Board has since come out to say that Madam Rahayu was already given most of her late mother’s CPF monies 31 years ago itself.
A spokesman told the national broadsheet that the CPF savings of Madam Rahayu’s mother were disbursed within the first two months of 1987, save for a “small residual amount” that was left in her account due to a particular transaction that pertained to housing.
That “small residual amount” was deducted several months later, according to CPF Board, when the transaction went through. The spokesman said that for the months that the “small residual amount” had remained in Madam Rahayu’s mother’s account before the transaction, the sum had accrued interest that amounted to less than $2.
The spokesman said that the amount that was left in the account for some months in 1987 “continued to attract interest until it was deducted several months later for the transaction. The interest accrued – which amounted to less than $2 – remained unclaimed.”
It was this unclaimed amount – less than $2 – that CPF Board invited Madam Rahayu to claim earlier this month, according to the spokesman: “Hence, as part of our regular review of cases with unclaimed residual monies recently, our staff invited (Madam Rahayu) to make the claim.”
In other words, CPF Board is asserting that it did not take 31 years to disburse the deceased Singaporean’s CPF savings to her daughter and that all of the actual savings had been relayed to Madam Rahayu three decades ago.
Meanwhile, Madam Rahayu has asked CPF Board in a subsequent query to explain how often they review unclaimed amounts in CPF members’ account since it took so long for the Government-linked agency to discover the balance and invite her to claim the interest.
CPF reportedly replied to Madam Rahayu that they are looking into her query. The CPF spokesman told reporters that the Board is “in the process of contacting Madam Rahayu to explain the details to her. We are also reviewing the process of disbursing nomination monies to see how we can improve it further.”