I woke up on the morning of my 55th birthday, logged on my computer and realize that ALL my EPF saving had disappeared! I drove to the EPF Office to enquire and found that the offices were closed! Shut down! There were many people at the premises looking for answers as to what happened to the savings. No one was there. No answers!
Driving back home, I passed the once mighty twin towers of Petronas. Avenue K is empty and ran down. The MCA building was also empty and abandoned. Few shop open the once popular Ampang Shopping complex. Embassy street was also deserted. The mignificant twin towers was no more Petronas' Twin Towers, it was now Shell's Twin Tower. Petronas ran out of money and force sold it to Shell! On the street of Jalan Ampang, there were homeless people wondering aimlessly through the scrap and rubbish hoping to find what little that can. The executives running around in their ties and fancy suits were no more to be seen, Is this KL, Malaysia? What has become of this once beautiful country? A country abundance of natural resources. One of elite member oil producing nation, nett exporter of petrolium?
I shook my head as I drove home. I cannot forgive the people who "borrowed" billions of ringgit from our EPF savings to "invest" in the equities market back in October 2008 when the market was most volatile. A market in the middle of a financial crisis that saw the collapse of the great Lehman Brothers, Meryill Lynch and many others. A market that saw stock markets across the world dive day after day into a seemingly bottomless pit. What wisdom, if any, our leaders had to do the exact opposite of what the world did to try to resolve the financial crisis at that time! Instead of stimulating the economy and building confidence in the banking industry, we were the only country in the world that gambled threw hard earned savings in plunging stock market - against all advice. In bad times as then, Maybank bought BII in Indonesia for a hefty price against financial advisors. Nobody knew the details and why thewre was a need to push through the deal. Now Maybank is under receivership and our Government cannot guarantee deposits. Maybank willprobably be history in the coming days. Why did they not learn from ING just a couple of weeks before that! They could have just cut lost and lose RM400 million! I was really angry.
Now I am driving through Kuala Lumpur, a city that's lost it glory, wallowing in economic despair and recession. Gone were the days when our economy was booming befitting an oil exporting nation.
The people who made those stupid decisions had nothing to worry, they were rich, super rich. Probably do not even understand what hunger is. Their children had silver spoons in their mouth, were sent overseas for studies early in their age. By passed the local education their parents were custodian of. The can afford the best schools in the UK, Australiaand elsewhere. I continue to worry about my future and my children's while I could have sat back and enjoyed the fruits of my labour.
Anyway, these people are all dead now. Can't even remember their names. We only remember them for their greed, arrogrance and above all for their stupidity in squandering the nation's wealth.
I now have to continue working hard to support my children. I would like to think all is not lost, there is hope.
I sincerely HOPE so.
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