An Empirical Study on Employees Provident Fund (EPF) Response towards the Initiative of Hajj Registration through Account 1

The study intends to measure the contributors’ response from the initiative launched by EPF that permits the hajj registration through savings in EPF. The study incorporates questionnaire 5 Likert scale format which distributed to 350 EPF contributors within the Klang Valley region of which 174 were filled and returned. It is consistent with Roscoe (1975) who suggests to have a sample sizes of larger than 30 and less than 500 to minimize committing Type II errors. Klang Valley was chosen due to availability of significant white collar workers which displays a significant presence of middle and high income families which associates with private sector workers since they are the main contributors’ for EPF. All variables display meaningful relationship with each other but as shown in the regression analysis, the main variable that really influences one’s attitude towards the hajj withdrawal scheme is the perceived convenience of the program itself. The contradictory issue in this study is on the permission of hajj registration itself; whereby the permission is only for registration and not to the extent of withdrawal the money for the hajj except if the contributor has reached the age of 55. In other word, the authors view it as a non holistic approach. The findings are useful for the EPF to enhance its initiative by allowing physical withdrawal of money from the account 1 once the depositor gets the hajj call-up even though the person has not meet the age of 55. The limitation of the study can arise from the demographic influence pertinent to other areas in the country. It is recommended to expand the pool of respondents and covering other nation’s region as well; Southern part, Northern part, the East Coast etc. Better representation of the findings is expected by incorporating the EPF management in future research.