Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work

2 Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Manpower in the past three years, how many reports have been received from platform firms or platform gig workers regarding injuries suffered in the course of platform or gig work including (i) near-misses (ii) accidents without injury (iii) accidents with injury of any severity and (iv) accidents with injury serious enough to require medical help.

The Senior Minister of State for Manpower (Dr Koh Poh Koon) (for the Minister for Manpower): Companies are required to report their employees’ injuries to MOM to facilitate expeditious processing of work injury compensation claims and ensure that the injured employees receive the necessary compensation. Platform workers are currently not covered by mandatory work injury compensation requirements, so platform work injury data is not reported to the Ministry.

The Government has accepted recommendations by the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers, including strengthening financial protection in case of work injury. Upon implementation of the work injury compensation framework for platform workers, the reporting of work injuries for platform workers will be mandated.

Mr Speaker: Dr Tan.

Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong): Mr Speaker, I thank the Senior Minister of State for his answer. I have Clementi residents who are delivery riders with platform companies; some have been injured on the job. The General Insurance Association (GIA) recently proposed expanded use of prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance instead of Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA) framework. Can I ask the Senior Minister of State, why did the insurers and platform companies not suggest this earlier, especially when they already knew that there were riders who were dying on the job?

Second, does it mean that the GIA proposal will need every company to buy 24-hour insurance coverage for their workers, even if the platform worker is only doing a few hours a day with that particular company? And if so, who is going to pay under the GIA recommendation?

Thirdly, if the GIA proposal is taken up, is it going to weaken the role of WICA? Will it encourage employers in other sectors to convert their employees into contractors so as to avoid the responsibilities and compensation that come with WICA protection for workers?

Mr Speaker: The Senior Minister of State can respond to the three supplementary questions raised. But just a reminder to Members to limit it to two questions.

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Thank you, Speaker. I believe the hon Member must be referring to the statement made by GIA to a Business Times article on 24 November 2022.

Let me just explain that today, some platform companies do provide platform workers with compensation for work injuries, but the coverage is uneven across different platforms and at much lower levels than what employees are entitled to under the WICA. For example, platform companies' coverage for death or permanent disability is largely in the $10,000 to $30,000 range, compared to employees' entitlement under WICA of up to $289,000. That is a significant difference in the magnitude of coverage.

This is why the Platform Workers Advisory Committee recommended requiring platform companies to provide the same scope and level of work injury compensation as employees' entitlement under WICA. This recommendation is both fair to the employers and to the platform workers. Employers meaning the platform companies.

It is fair to platform workers because they receive the same work injury compensation protection as other workers exposed to the same job risks, such as employees in related sectors like logistics. It is fair to platform companies because they only need to cover platform workers if they are injured in the course of work. If, for example, the platform worker was injured while running personal errands, the platform company is not responsible to provide compensation. This is no different from employers' responsibility towards their employees under WICA and ensures a level playing field across different companies.

On the other hand, GIA has suggested requiring companies to purchase prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance, in place of WICA. Such insurance policies provide 24/7 coverage and compensation, regardless of whether an injury happen in the course of work. They also use fixed payouts, unlike the WICA mechanism where compensation amount varies based on the worker's total earnings.

While we welcome platform companies to go above and beyond by providing 24/7 coverage for their workers, the Government should not require them to do so, to provide coverage for injuries that are not as a result of work. Similarly, it would not be right to provide a fixed payout to injured platform workers when platform workers are a diverse group, ranging from those who engage in casual work – perhaps only infrequently and a short number of hours a day – to those who do it on a more full-time basis, on a daily basis.

The Platform Workers Advisory Committee recommended that compensation for platform workers should vary based on workers' earnings, the same way that WICA operates today for injured employees. This is fair to the platform worker and platform company as the amount of compensation would depend on the extent of income lost by the worker due to the injury at work.

Dr Tan Wu Meng asked if GIA's suggestions will weaken WICA. I just want to reassure the Member that MOM will ensure that companies do not misclassify workers in order to skirt the requirements under WICA. But indeed, one other important aspect of WICA is that under this legal framework, there is an established mechanism under which companies and workers who object to the insurers' assessment of the claim, can file a dispute. MOM will then oversee a dispute resolution process, to adjudicate and settle the claim. This ensures that claims are resolved fairly in accordance with the WICA framework, without prejudice to the company or the worker.

GIA's suggestion of using only existing prolonged medical leave insurance or group personal accident insurance in place of WICA would relegate this to private insurance policy whose terms and conditions are dictated by the insurer without a clear mechanism to adjudicate disputes.

I appreciate why insurers would want more flexibility in how they compensate claims. But to ensure fairness to workers and companies, I do not think we should be leaving it to insurers to be the final arbiter of any disputes in work injury claims. There could well be a conflict of interest in such a scenario.

In the committee's engagement with different groups of platform workers and looking at some of the surveys and studies conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), there is feedback from workers that when they want to claim injury claims from some of these insurers as a result of group personal accident insurance policies they were protected under, they often have to jump through hoops. And some of them find it very difficult to actually get the claims settled. There were some who told us that they gave up filing claims because it was so onerous and they had no place to turn to.

In our engagements with insurers, we were also told that offering prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance at the same level of coverage as WICA would result in higher insurance premiums for platform companies, compared to an insurance policy based on the committee's recommended approach. This is not surprising since the scope of coverage for these policies is much wider, on a 24/7 basis.

Thus, GIA's suggestion would result in higher business costs to platform companies, especially since regardless of the type of insurance, platform companies will need to purchase insurance that covers all platform workers, and this includes precisely the group that Dr Tan said – those who only do one hour of work a day on the platform. GIA's statement is in contrary to what insurers have advised the committee.

GIA also suggested that platform workers could rely on MediShield Life coverage for medical expenses due to work injury. Again, let me reiterate the principle that platform workers should receive the same level of coverage for work injury compensation as employees.

Given that employees are covered for up to $45,000 in medical expenses for work injuries by their employers, there is no reason why platform workers should have to rely on MediShield Life which they pay for using their own MediSave, and consequently, pay part of the medical bills using their MediSave or out-of-pocket cash if they suffer a work injury.

GIA's suggestion is essentially asking platform workers to pay for their own medical expenses. For these reasons, GIA's proposal is not a viable alternative to the advisory committee's recommendation of requiring platform companies to provide the same scope and level of compensation as employees under WICA. It will lead to either unsustainable premiums for platform companies while work injury compensation for platform workers, they are far below the level of entitlements by employees under WICA.

I note that The Business Times article which the Member probably referred to – that was published on 24 November – stated that GIA Chief Executive Officer Mr Ho Kai Weng said, " GIA members firmly believe financial protection for platform workers can be efficiently achieved through the existing solutions compared to the WICA-based solution." That is the crux of the supplementary question asked by the hon Dr Tan Wu Meng. That is, if it was so viable, why did the insurers and platform companies not suggest this earlier when there were workers who were injured or suffered death while on the job.

Our discussions with insurers showed it was not possible to do so in a cost-effective way. But given the confidence that GIA has on the efficiency of existing products and policies that they have and the public statements by various platform companies that platform workers deserved protection for injuries incurred in the course of their work, I would suggest that GIA members work closely with platform companies to offer financial protection and compensation for these workers at the level of WICA as soon as possible by the first quarter of next year, hopefully, using their existing products while maintaining the cost of premiums at parity with WICA insurance products.

This will provide better coverage for the workers in the interim and keep costs manageable for platform companies and consumers while we work on implementation details of WICA for this group of workers by the end of 2024. In conclusion, Mr Speaker, I would like to reiterate that the committee's recommendations are fair to both platform companies and workers and take a balanced approach to strengthening platform workers' financial protection in case of work injury in a sustainable manner. We look forward to continuing our engagements with platform workers, platform companies and insurers as we work towards implementing these recommendations.

Mr Speaker: Mr Liang Eng Hwa.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa (Bukit Panjang): Sir, I want to thank the Senior Minister of State for leading this future major effort to take care of the welfare of our platform workers and also for him to personally come down to Bukit Panjang to engage our platform workers support group just a few months ago. The Senior Minister of State mentioned about the recommendation from the advisory group, I would like to ask him for the reception from the platform workers and the company so far on all these recommendations. And in particular, I want to hear from the Senior Minister of State, his views on the concern raised by Grab with regards to the issue of level playing field as the taxi's street hail platforms are excluded from the recommendations, whether there would potentially be issues of price and market distortions?

Dr Koh Poh Koon: Sir, I thank Mr Liang for working with the committee in the lead-up to the announcement by helping us to also provide avenues to engage to workers. Indeed, these are early days since the recommendations were announced. The early sensing from different stakeholders, workers, companies and consumers showed that it is a positive set of recommendations that is much welcomed. The workers basically welcome the fact that they will now – when it is implemented – have better work injury compensation, much better than they had today under WICA.

But, of course, the details of implementation are not fully out. So, there are some concerns about whether it will be effectively implemented. For the platform companies, they have put out statements to say that recommendations are fair and balanced and they welcome the changes that will enhance the protection given to these group of workers. So, on the whole, this is very much welcomed.

Our surveys before the release also showed that consumers in various surveys, between 70% and 90% are prepared to pay up to 10% more in prices to make sure that these workers have the adequate protection, so long as the price increase that they pay for goes directly to helping these workers address their income retirement, their retirement adequacy as well as their ability to have housing adequacy.

Generally, the public, the companies and the workers themselves all welcome this set of recommendations.

Specific to the comment that the Member raised about Grab's statement expressing that – excluding street hails from these recommendations would create an unlevel playing field. I would say that, in fact, including street hail into this recommendation would cause an uneven playing field instead. The simple reason is that street hail taxis actually work on a different business model as opposed to a platform model because in the street hail model, the taxi driver is essentially renting the taxi from the taxi companies. The taxi driver decides how he wants to pick up passengers, where he wants to pick up, he can deny working for the day, if he chose to, with no penalties levied by the taxi company. It is more of a rental and rentee kind of relationship.

In fact, in a street hail engagement, the passenger pays to the taxi driver directly. The money does not pass through any app platform, it does not go through the taxi company and there is no commission being levied on the amount of fare that the passenger pays to the taxi driver through a street hail. In that sense, the degree of management control is less and perhaps non-existent in this case. And that is why in the deliberation, the committee recommended that platform companies that exert a certain degree of management control on these supposed group of self-employed workers will then need to provide these workers with some degree of basic protection which includes work injury compensation as well as retirement and housing adequacy.