COMPULSORY ANNUITY - our money or their $$$?

this posting in sbf forum says it all - our anguish for not being able to have the FREEDOM to access and use our savings....after all these years! so exasperating!!

From: thinkall 09:11
To: ALL

166824.1

I will do this alone and that is all that is needed, one big press a day and I will make the difference, one major world organisation a day I will do it the way my heart puts it. My own country’s representatives do not give a hoot, I will send to all political organisations outside this country and NGOs I can get my hand on.



I will singularly do what I must and I will succeed to make the clarion call that need to be made through the silence of my people.




I will not stop until a referendum is had that Singaporean prefer compulsory annuity than debt to be paid.




The inability of PAP to pay is not my concern, they had abused the savings of the people they must pay the price and not disguise as some benevolent measure of love.




I will singularly do what I must.


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Dear Sir,




I am a citizen of Singapore I wish to bring to your attention concerning a certain miscarriage of justice in my country which has become the source of great frustration amongst my people. In my country, we have compulsory savings which requires every single working citizen in this country to maintain a third of his income with the government as “savings” so that we may be given access to it once we retire.




The grave concern here is the fact that we are now not going to be able to access our savings and its will be effectively pooled against our will into an annuity fund, the reason given was that our old age may be better taken care of if we were not to be given our lump sum of savings for fear we will not carry the sum to the end of our earthly existence.




While we watch our government, with it sovereign wealth funds go investing in depreciating assets and making many investments, many of us suspected that this government may not have the amount needed to pay us when our retirement are due.




The angst of the people is grave and yet there was no reporting of our grave concern in our press or any representation of alternative view that could push the collective unease of the people. The people of Singapore has one of the highest indebtedness in the world and it is not coincidence that we also have one of the highest national saving rate in the world, due to the segregation of our savings from our control, many of us had to make ends meet by taking loans which we can least afford so that we may carry on with our lives. The interest spread between such loans and returns from our savings in our mandatory saving, which we do not have access as expenditure is one of the main cause of our continual inability to make ends meet, while the State took the monies worldwide investing in ways which we do not understand or appreciate.




Now, we are told that we will no longer see our savings and will only be distributed to us in portion in the form of a compulsory annuity, which the name of the programme imply does not have our concurrence.




There are many reasons why the people of Singapore seem silent; the main reason is because we are silenced by the State. Election has been gerrymandered in such a way that the legislature is 95 percent and more controlled by a single party. The press is controlled by the governor; the media is under the strict sanction of the party and State mechanism. The judiciary is compliant to the directive of the State, no case against the governor ever proceed to trial.




The people of Singapore are angry and had long wanted to vote for an opposition to stand against this government however the threshold were raised every time the people go to the ballot box, all possible barriers, structural ones and legal ones were put up just to ensure a compliant result.



Right now, a deliberate plan to once and for all deprive the people of Singapore of its savings is about to unveil. The plan is simply to pool all the savings so that all savings are no longer fixed liabilities that need to be paid to the specific people in specific time.




Our sovereign wealth funds are not openly audited for the benefits of the people and with this compulsory annuity measure, the people are collectively questioning this government the state of our mandatory savings. Instead of answering our questions they pooled our monies to extinguish their liabilities.




My only hope is that your paper could investigate my claims and report according to your editorial discretion.





Most sincerely,

(name has been left out)