Speaking at the Dewan Negara today, Shahar said the implementation of four facilities introduced to tackle problems brought by the Covid-19 pandemic, namely i-Lestari, i-Sinar, i-Citra as well as the special one-off withdrawal of RM10,000, had seen around RM145 billion being withdrawn.

Meanwhile, the employee share statutory contribution rate reduction programme, which ran for 27 months from April 2020 to June 2022, had impacted the pension fund by another RM10 billion, Shahar was quoted as saying in a Bernama report.

“EPF members’ savings are at a low and very worrying level, especially after the four withdrawals and the reduction in the employee share statutory contribution rate,” he said.

Shahar said that as of June 30, 6.62 million members — or 52% of the total of 12.78 million EPF members aged under 55 — had savings of less than RM10,000.

Of that number, 4.99 million members (75%) were Bumiputeras.

At the same time, there were 3.2 million members under the age of 55 whose savings were at a “very critical” level of less than RM1,000. Shahar said that of this number, 2.58 million members (81%) were Bumiputeras.

He said that Bumiputeras make up 64% (8.22 million) of the fund’s total number of 12.78 million members under the age of 55.

Shahar was responding to a question from Razali Idris, who wanted to know what measures were being taken to assist EPF members with savings of less than RM10,000.

Shahar said EPF provided various channels to make it easier for members to contribute more to the fund, with those who are employed and have an employer able to choose to contribute beyond the employee share statutory contribution rate of 11%.

He added that they could also contribute more to the EPF themselves at any time, subject to a maximum amount of RM60,000 per year.