On 11 September 2025, the Ministry of Manpower (“MOM“) announced that the Platform Workers Trilateral Group (“Trilateral Group“) had released 10 recommendations to safeguard Platform Workers’ (“PWs“) livelihoods, safety and well-being. The recommendations address two key areas of concerns:
- Fairer and safer payment and incentive schemes, with a view to improving transparency and to avoid PWs working long hours in pursuit of uncertain earnings; and
- Unauthorised activities (such as illegal point-to-point (“P2P“) rides and foreigners using local PWs’ platform accounts), specifically to stamp out illegal undercutting of local PWs.
The 10 recommendations are as follows:
- Establishing practices for fairer and safer platform work
- Platform operators (“POs“) and platform work associations (“PWAs“) should work together to develop a set of industry-wide principles for issues related to payment and/or incentive schemes.
- POs and PWAs should collectively identify key information to be provided to PWs to better address anxieties around income uncertainty, and schedule regular meetings to discuss key issues.
- PWAs will continue to encourage PWs to prioritise and take care of their health and safety.
- Food delivery POs that outsource jobs will provide more clarity and assurance to PWs on outsourcing practices, and encourage PWs to head to high demand areas.
- Stamping out illegal undercutting of local PWs
- Strengthening enforcement and setting stringent punishments for abetting illegal platform work across all platform sectors. Where an offence under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act is established, all POs will debar the PW for a minimum of 24 months;
- Strengthening enforcement against illegal P2P rides, including by engaging online platforms to take down apps, channels or advertisements that facilitate the illegal matching of rides;
- For food delivery POs, strengthening detection and prevention of illegal activities in the sector;
- For POs, PWs and the Government to raise awareness of the dangers of illegal providers and the consequences of illegal activities;
- Setting up of dedicated reporting channels by the Government and PWAs to enable reporting of foreigners suspected of performing illegal platform work; and
- Encouraging the reporting of suspected illegal activities by both PWs and members of the public.
The recommendations will be adopted by all the POs engaged by the Trilateral Group (namely, AmazonFlex, ComfortDelGro Zig, Deliveroo, foodpanda, Gojek, Grab, Lalamove, Ryde and TADA), and implemented in phases. The Trilateral Group has already launched dedicated reporting channels for PWs and members of the public to report potential violations to the authorities. In turn, MOM and the Ministry of Transport have also undertaken enhanced enforcement actions to stamp out illegal platform activities across P2P transport services and delivery work.
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