KUALA LUMPUR: The country recorded 4.94 million accident cases in the last decade, with the number of road accidents increasing from 414,421 cases in 2010 to 567,516 nine years later in 2019.
Last year amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the country recorded 3,118 deaths involving motorcycle riders and 888 deaths involving car drivers.
The Social Security Organisation (Socso) chief executive officer Datuk Seri Dr Mohammed Azman Aziz Mohammed said road traffic deaths was the main cause of death among those between 15 and 29 years old.
"Malaysia recorded 7,152 deaths from road accidents in 2016 and 6,167 deaths in 2019.
"It is important to note that with the pandemic and the rise of the gig economy, the increasing number of ride-hailing services has led to a rise in road accidents involving e-hailing riders.
"This is a public health and development crisis, and it is expected to worsen unless action is taken," he said during his opening remarks at Vision Zero: Work-related Road Safety (International) Webinar series earlier today.
Azman said road safety issues relating to work needed to be constantly addressed, especially in the areas of protection and prevention.
To provide better social security protection to self-employed individuals, Azman said Socso had devised three contribution-matching protection programmes for self-employed individuals.
"They have been devised under the different government economic stimulus packages for self-employed individuals, including gig workers. They are PenjanaGig, SPS Lindung and SPS Prihatin Wanita, which came under the provisions of the Self-Employment Social Security Act 2017.
He said the programmes would protect insured self-employed persons against employment injuries, including occupational diseases and accidents during work-related activities.
"We always believe that zero work-related accidents and diseases cannot be achieved by any single organisation or country on its own.
"Instead, great strides are only possible with close collaboration and synergy between different industry players across multiple sectors in the field," he said.
The webinar saw over 1,000 participants from Malaysia and 12 other countries across Southeast Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. It was jointly organised by Sosco and Malaysia Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros).
It was held to bring together Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) and Social Security practitioners to discuss and deliberate on the latest safety and health issues.