WHY ARE OUR CPF RETIREMENT FUNDS BEING MANAGED BY INEXPERIENCED SCHOLARS?

Our CPF has been seriously mismanaged and CPF members had better wake up to this fact.

For a start, look no further than the current CEO of CPF, ex paper general equivalent Chief of Navy Ng CheePeng. When Ng became CEO, CPF had total balances of about $280 billion. Questions:

– Was Ng qualified to manage $280 billion?
– Would any fund employ an ex military guy with no fund management background to manage even $28 million?

If ex generals are well qualified, then shouldn’t PAP be employing US generals who have vastly more real life experience instead of ours with only paper experience?

Ng served in the Navy from 1988 to 2014. But he had actually served only 22 years, not 26 years, because taxpayers funded his 4 years of studies at Oxford and Harvard. After leaving the navy, Ng was promoted to Deputy Secretary (Special Projects) in the Ministry of Manpower for about 6 months to gain some ‘experience’. CPF Board is a statutory board under the MOM.

Ng’s 6-month stint at MOM is a sort of highly-paid OJT to prepare him for his role as CEO of CPF Board. No one can now claim Ng has no ‘experience’. 

(Ng has a brother who is currently the Perm Sec (Defence) and another who is SMOS (Transport). All three are ex paper generals)

In order to discharge his responsibilities to CPF members, Ng needed some fund management experience. He has none.

In reality, Ng also does not need to know how to manage a fund because our CPF has not been invested in any fund but loaned to the PAP government. Ng’s job is to place our CPF in a sort of a very long term fixed deposit with the government, the terms of its use dictated by PAP.

If Ng’s job is to simply hand over our CPF to the government – no questions asked – isn’t that something every Ah Kow or Ahmad knows? I mean, how difficult is it to go to a bank to open an FD account?

When we look at past CEOs of CPF Board, we begin to understand how screwed up our system is.

Ng’s predecessor is Yee Ping Yi who has depended on tax dollars his entire working life. Like paper general Ng, Yee had zero fund management experience prior to joining CPF Board.

How was this joker looking after the retirement interest of CPF members by lending our hard-earned savings to the government at rock bottom interest rates?

Joker’s predecessor was a LiewHeng San, another Jack of all trades scholar who joined the civil service in 1977 and was appointed:
-Director, MTI (1990 to 1992)
-PPS to DPM (1991 to 1995)
-Dep Sec for Communications (1995 to 1996)
CEO, LTA (1995 to 1998)
Dep Sec (Development ), PSD, 1998 to 2000)
Perm Sec, Law (2001 to 2005)
CEO, CPF Board (2005 to 2011)

Was scholar Liew qualified to manage our CPF funds?

Prior to LiewHeng San, PAP appointed Willie Tan, another SAF Scholar, as CEO from 2002 to 2005. Willie was with SAF/Mindef from 1974 to 1989. He had also served in the MND, PSD, HOH and Health Corporation of Singapore. These are all irrelevant experience where fund management is concerned.

The role of a CPF CEO is simply to take instructions from PAP in return for guaranteed promotion in salary and status. The issue of retirement shortfall has been festering for decades and there’s no solution in sight because we have been overpaying these clowns to do a job which they are not qualified.

CPF members should not imagine our interests are being looked after by these Jack of all trades CEOs. How can most of us ever retire comfortably when these million-dollar jokers are lending our hard-earned savings to the government in the form of very long-term fixed deposits?