The Deduction People Are Cancelling Without Understanding It
There is a small new line on Malaysian payslips, and a lot of employees are opting out of it. The reasoning feels sensible: why pay twice when I already have insurance? The problem is that the reasoning is wrong on almost every point, and it leads people to give up cover they cannot buy anywhere else at this price.
Lindung 24 Jam is not a second insurance policy you are duplicating. It is a different kind of protection entirely, and the “I already have insurance” instinct is exactly what talks people out of it. Before you dismiss it as a duplicate, it is worth understanding what it actually gives you.
Insurance and Social Security Are Not the Same Thing
A private insurance policy is a contract. You pay a premium priced to your personal risk, and you are covered for what the policy lists, subject to its exclusions, its limits, and its willingness to keep renewing you. If you are older, or in a higher-risk job, you pay more, and sometimes you are not offered cover at all.
Lindung 24 Jam is social security, which works on the opposite principle. Contributions from millions of workers are pooled into one fund, and benefits are paid out according to need and eligibility, not according to how much any individual put in. There is no risk-loading, no medical underwriting, and no age ceiling while you are employed. One is a product sold to those who qualify; the other is a shared safety net built so that no worker is turned away.
PERKESO Already Protects You Three Ways
Most people picture PERKESO as a single deduction. It is actually a safety net with three separate layers, and every insured worker sits inside all of them.
The first is the Employment Injury Scheme, which covers accidents that happen at work and on the daily commute. This one is paid for entirely by the employer.
The second is the Invalidity Scheme. If a serious illness or condition unrelated to work leaves you permanently unable to earn a living, it pays you an invalidity pension where you meet the contribution conditions, and if you die before the age of 60, your family receives a survivors’ pension of between 50 and 65 per cent of your assumed wage, subject to a monthly minimum. This scheme is funded by the employer and the employee together, and the employee’s share is the SOCSO line that has quietly sat on your payslip for years.
The third is Lindung 24 Jam, which fills the one gap the other two leave open: accidents that happen outside work, around the clock, anywhere in Malaysia. This is the layer the employee funds directly.
Put the three together and the real picture appears. Work accidents, non-work illness and death, and now non-work accidents are all covered, for roughly 1.25 per cent of wages on the employee’s side. Lindung 24 Jam is not a new charge appearing from nowhere. It is the final piece completing a net you were already standing in.
You Are Not Choosing Between Insurance and This. You Can Have Both
Here is the part the opt-out reflex misses completely. Signing up to Lindung 24 Jam does not cancel your private insurance, and it does not clash with it. If you hold a personal accident policy and an accident happens, PERKESO does not stop you claiming under Lindung 24 Jam while also claiming under your own policy, each according to its own terms.
That single fact dismantles the reason most people opt out. Cancelling Lindung 24 Jam to avoid “paying twice” saves you very little, and it throws away a layer you would otherwise have stacked on top of the insurance you already own. You are not trimming a duplicate; you are deleting a second payout you were entitled to receive.
What Your Insurance Will Not Do, and Lindung 24 Jam Will
The sharpest difference is the one nobody thinks about until it is too late, and it begins right at the hospital. A private medical card pays for treatment up to its policy limit, and once that limit or its exclusions are reached, the balance is yours to find.
Lindung 24 Jam works differently on the medical side, provided you are treated at a government hospital. There, it covers the full cost of treating the injury until you recover, including the expensive items a private card often caps or leaves out, such as prosthetics, implants, and other devices. PERKESO settles that cost directly with the government hospital, so you are not paying upfront and chasing a reimbursement afterwards, the treatment is simply taken care of. This full-cost coverage is tied to government facilities; treatment sought privately is handled differently and only reimbursed at set rates.
Then it does the thing private insurance never does at all. It replaces your income. A temporary disablement benefit is paid for as long as you are certified unfit to work, so a broken leg does not also become a broken pay cheque.
If the injury proves lasting, it pays a permanent disablement benefit, and where the disability is severe enough to need constant care, a monthly constant-attendance allowance on top. If the worst happens and the accident is fatal, it pays a dependants’ benefit to your family and a funeral benefit for the immediate cost. And if you need rehabilitation to recover, it is provided through PERKESO’s Return to Work programme and its rehabilitation network, anchored by the Tun Razak Rehabilitation Centre, so getting back to work is part of the benefit rather than something you arrange alone.
As the detail in What Lindung 24 Jam Covers sets out, all of this reaches the accidents that happen in your own time, at home, on the road, at play, which is exactly where most injuries actually occur. A medical card helps with part of the bill. Lindung 24 Jam covers the treatment in full at a government hospital and keeps paying you while you recover.
What the Deduction Is Really Worth
For a fraction of a per cent of monthly wages, capped at the standard salary ceiling, Lindung 24 Jam buys round-the-clock accident protection that no private policy offers at that price, with no age limit and no risk pricing. It is among the best-value protection a Malaysian worker can hold, and for most people it costs less than a single meal out each month.
That is what is being cancelled on the assumption that it is a duplicate. It is not, and the numbers make that plain the moment you look at them properly.
Make the Decision With the Full Picture
Opting out of Lindung 24 Jam is a deliberate choice to give up the protection, and it deserves to be made knowing what that protection actually is, not on the reflex that insurance already has it covered.
The good news is that the decision is not closed to you. If you opted out and later change your mind, you can still opt back in. What is worth knowing is that the commitment runs one way: once you are in, you stay in, because the scheme is built on the principle that protection, once granted, is continuous. So joining is a choice you can make whenever you are ready. It is leaving, once you are covered, that is not on the table.
This is where employers and HR have a real role, because the payslip is where the confusion begins. When TimeTec Payroll shows the contribution as its own clearly labelled line and handles each employee’s participation status, HR can explain what the deduction actually buys instead of leaving people to guess.
A medical card stops at the hospital bill. Lindung 24 Jam covers the treatment, then carries you through everything that comes after. And if you turned it down earlier and have since seen it differently, the door is still open to opt back in.