Malaysia’s Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) has set a target of one million contributors from the gig economy and other self-employed workers by the end of the year. Its chief communications and corporate affairs officer, Roshaimi Mat Rosely said there are 693,969 active contributors registered under SOCSO’s social security scheme for the self-employed nationwide as of September.
The number of self-employed contributors is expected to increase further given that the scheme’s contributions for hawkers and licensed traders will start on January 1 next year. In July, Human Resources Minister, Steven Sim said that there were 650,000 contributors as of June. This shows that the number of contributors had increased by over 43,000 in the past three months alone. Sim was also quoted as saying that the government was considering scrapping the current manual registration process and imposing an automatic registration for gig workers when they register with companies such as Grab or Foodpanda.
