SINGAPORE - Some online services of the Central Provident Fund (CPF) Board are still down, more than two weeks after a website upgrade caused a major service outage.
The CPF Board last night said that, together with its vendor Microsoft, it had identified the cause to be an "integration component" used by the website which malfunctioned because of high traffic and caused the wrong information to be displayed.
The system has been taken off-line as a safeguard and the board is working with Microsoft to progressively restore all online services.
"Much as we would like to bring the e-services online as quickly as possible, we cannot afford to compromise (their) stability and reliability," said CPF Board's chief executive officer Ng Chee Peng.
As at 10pm yesterday, the only services available on the site were the checking and printing of statements and transaction history.
As a result of the disruption to the online services, the CPF service centre in Bishan yesterday had long queues of people.
Terminals that normally provided access to online services were switched off.
While an electronic board displayed a waiting time of two hours, some people told The Straits Times they had been informed by CPF staff that the wait could be as long as three hours.
Some customers could be seen leaving in frustration.
Airport screening officer Stanley Ruben Joseph had gone to the service centre to check his statement after being unable to do so on his smartphone.
"I saw the crowd and walked out," said the 58-year-old.
Madam Jessie Lee said she had tried several times to withdraw money from her Medisave account through the website, but was unable to do so.
The 61-year-old executive said she had been unable to get through to the CPF call centre to make an appointment.
She said the CPF Board should try to resolve the problem soon.
Madam Lee said she had to wait in line for an hour, but the staff were helpful and guided her to where she needed to go.
Last year, 54 million transactions were carried out on the CPF website, which had won a Singapore Government Web Excellence Award in 2010 for user-friendliness.
