When En. Ahmad* was involved in a car accident, he lost his hearing, apart from losing his job. Being a security officer for the past 15 years at a local government agency, En Ahmad was only paid a simple salary of RM 2600 a month, which was insufficient for the household expenditures. Due to the accident, he was forced into resignation as his hearing disability greatly affected his job.
En. Ahmad was simply devastated when this happened; he began to worry about keeping up with his monthly expenditures. His housing loan monthly commitment alone was RM1000, on top of that he also had monthly commitments on his hire purchase and personal loans. En. Ahmad who was only 48 years old and had two school going children and a wife to care for was extremely worried about his financial security. He did not know how he would secure any other employment with his limited experience and education. On top of that, having a hearing impairment was a setback for a lot of blue-collar jobs.
Distraught, En. Ahmad approached his previous employer in hopes that they could ease his predicament. His previous employers then encouraged En. Ahmad to get an official supporting letter from a government hospital outlining and verifying his disability. With this in hand, En. Ahmad previous employers were able to approach PERKESO to secure a monthly “Pencen Ilat” of RM1400, a form of disability pension En. Ahmad was entitled to because of his hearing impairment.
Securing the disability pension alleviated En. Ahmad's worries a little; however he was still not confident about his ability to manage his monthly loan repayments commitment to the banks. He shared his woes with his brother who stepped in and promised En Ahmad an extra RM200 a month to help with the bills. His brother also suggested him to speak with AKPK to seek advice on alleviating his monthly commitments to his loans.
AKPK tackled the issue by first looking at his outstanding housing loan. En. Ahmad was advised to withdraw from his Employee Provident Fund No 2 to fully settle his housing loan. En. Ahmad who was unaware that he could use his EPF money for this purpose was elated that the house would be finally paid off fully. Next was the hire purchase monthly commitment of RM700, an amount too high for him to manage. With AKPK’s help the repayment tenure of the loan increased which in turn brought down En. Ahmad’s monthly hire purchase repayment commitment by half the original amount.
With the two main monthly repayments being taken care of, AKPK then worked on restructuring his personal loan repayments from RM 350 a month to RM 200. By law the "Pencen Ilat" cannot be used to make a repayment, and restructuring it to RM 200 allows En. Ahmad's brother to make payments to the personal loan on his behalf. The agency managed to settle En. Ahmad's predicament, and was able to work with him in sign language to provide the information and help he needed. With the help of AKPK, En. Ahmad can now breathe a sigh of relief and looked forward to financial freedom
**Note: For purposes of confidentiality, the real identity of the people involved in these success stories are not disclosed.