The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) must be accountable to its 9.7 million contributors by practising a new policy of transparency chiefly concerning its investments in the share market, said DAP leader Lim Kit Siang today.

"The contributors are very concerned about the safety and quality of their RM181 billion EPF funds, especially with the catalogue of disastrous EPF investments," he said in a media statement.

"The EPF can start by confirming whether it has bought some 3.4 million Maybank shares valued around RM43 million over 12 days between March 9 and 27 which resulted in a RM7 million loss," he added.

He said a similar investment by EPF in Time dotCom caused the statutory body to suffer a loss of RM110 million.

EPF invested RM269.28 million in a 'bailout operation' of Time dotCom 's initial public offering (IPO) recently and yesterday's dive at the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (KLSE) Composite Index saw the company's shares being traded at RM1.96 per share. The IPO shares were originally released at RM3.30 per share.

Revise policy

"EPF contributors are entitled to know the full details of the shares bought and sold using EPF money so that they would be in a position to judge whether it was a prudent investment or otherwise," added Lim. He also called on EPF to release public information on their investments regularly.

Lim said EPF's existing policy of disseminating information on its performance and investments through its annual reports and quarterly announcements is unsatisfactory.

He also questioned if it was the fund's role to provide money to buy shares just to prop up the stock market even if such investments resulted in "colossal losses".

Lim also wants EPF to clarify if it was involved in the "final-minutes-multi-million-ringgit institutional manipulation" of KLSE by buying Telekom Malaysia Bhd, Maybank and Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) stocks in the past three months.

Earlier, the DAP leader had claimed there was a possible last-minute market manipulation in order to shore up the falling index.

KLSE dropped 38.91 points yesterday to end at a two-year low and below the psychological 600 level to end trade at 594.26 points.

The trend continued downward at the close of morning trade today, falling 11.46 points to 582.80.

Public forums

Lim said DAP will be launching nationwide public forums on the use of public money in EPF and Pensions Trust Fund for the purposes of 'bailouts and buyouts' of ailing companies.

"The forum will also be the launching pad for the establishment of the EPF Contributors Association to protect the rights and interests of the contributors," he said.

The association will serve as an avenue for the contributors to channel their grievances to the EPF Board, added Lim.

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