If these 145,000 self-employed cannot afford to pay their medisave contributions, it is another confirmation that the economy is very bad.
These groups of people who are hawkers, small timers and free-lancers need help, not financially but openning up of contractors'/suppliers' registration system and deregulations to prevent small businesses from tendering works and services farmed out by the public sector.
Adoption of an open category like COE with certain conditions of verifications of expertise and knowledge (waiving track records or references) will help many small timers to overcome the present difficulties they are experiencing in getting jobs. To solve our economic problems, government has to look at problems at the bottom strata of society not just their continuous pro-foreign investment plans of the past era.
