Plight of self-employed – You owe CPF, you lose license. What logic is this?

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Plight of self-employed – You owe CPF, you lose license

May 28th, 2014 | Author: Contributions

Recently when I was in a taxi I just got reminded of this stupid system which I believe has been in practice for many years. The uncle told me if you owe CPF Medisave Account you will not be allowed to apply for or renew licenses such as taxi license or hawker license.

Taxi drivers have to ensure their Medisave Accounts are in order before they are allowed to renew their licenses.

He was la
menting that his license which is due for renewal will not be renewed unless he pays up what he “owes” Medisave. In the first place I don’t understand how self-employed people can be deemed to owe CPF as they did not borrow any money in the first place. He has been appealing and so far he has been unsuccessful. They even rejected his suggestion to allow him to top up in installments. He even tried to suggest if he can have some money transferred from his wife’s (next of kin) account which has surplus in all accounts and was also told not possible. This is also strange as we are allowed to use our CPF to pay for next of kin medical bills, but not allowed to transfer into next of kin Medisave Account???

I shared with him my first hand experience of this 8 years ago when I was unemployed for a period, LTA rejected my taxi license application stating that I owed Medisave a few hundred dollars. I tried to explain to the officer there that I had been unemployed for many months and that is the reason why I am applying for a taxi license and that after driving taxi I may be able to earn money to top up my Medisave. It didn’t matter to that officer who simply told me that is the rule.

How in the world denying these people license to operate is going to help the situation? Most self-employed people usually have difficulties managing day to day expenses and they may truly not be able to top up their Medisave Accounts. Why is this linked and who has given these ministries and departments like LTA and NEA the authority to deny people licenses based on the level of Medisave contributions. This is like blackmailing or maybe worse.

Can somebody please explain to me the logic if I am dumb enough to miss something???

I promised the taxi-uncle that I will write about his plight here and hope you can publish it.

Self-employed

* Submitted by TRE reader.


Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.