Inspections Conducted to Ensure Food Delivery Platform Operators Engage Only Singaporeans or PRs as Freelancers

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim asked the Minister for Manpower (a) apart from acting on complaints received, whether the Ministry conducts proactive inspections to ensure that food delivery riders working for the major food delivery platforms as freelancers are legitimate workers who are Singapore Citizens or Permanent Residents; (b) if so, how often are these checks conducted; and (c) what is the total number of violations or arrests that have resulted from such checks in the past six months.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has worked with food delivery platform operators to advise riders against allowing foreigners to use or share their food delivery accounts. Platforms operators can also enhance their processes to prevent the misuse of accounts by unauthorised parties. Working through platform operators is more effective and efficient than conducting proactive inspection, given the decentralised and mobile nature of food delivery work.

MOM also acts on complaints to weed out these practices. This is also an effective channel of enforcement as legitimate workers have an interest in raising cases of offences to the authorities. From January to June 2024, MOM received a total of 14 complaints on suspected illegal foreign delivery riders. Enforcement action was taken against one case as the other cases were found to be unsubstantiated.