Every week, PERKESO (also known as Socso) rehabilitation centres help Malaysians who have lost the thing most of us take for granted: the ability to go to work.
A welder whose hand was crushed in a press.
A dispatch rider who fell off his bike.
A young engineer who suffered a stroke before her 40th birthday.
They arrive with medical files, anxious loved ones, and a simple question: can I still earn a living?
PERKESO’s answer to that question is becoming more ambitious than many Malaysians realise.
For too long, social security in our public conversation has been shorthand for retirement and EPF.
But the quieter, more economically consequential work happens long before retirement.
It’s about keeping injured and ill workers from falling out of the labour market in the first place.
Done well, this is not charity.
It is among the most productive public investments we can make.
Every ringgit spent returning a skilled worker to employment pays itself back many times over in restored tax receipts, preserved household incomes, and avoided long-term dependency.
Done badly, it is a slow, expensive tragedy playing out in hundreds of thousands of homes.
Prioritising rehabilitation
By international standards, we are doing this well.
PERKESO now protects close to 10 million workers, nearly double what it covered a decade ago.
Its group chief executive, Datuk Seri Dr Mohammed Azman Aziz, embraces a simple, but powerful, mantra: prevention before rehabilitation, rehabilitation before compensation.
Last October (2025), he was re-elected president of the International Social Security Association for the 2026–2028 term – a rare distinction for an emerging economy, and recognition of the model and leadership that we have.
That model rests on a simple insight: insurance without rehabilitation is half a promise.
A cash benefit keeps the lights on; it does not put anyone back to work.
Since 2014, PERKESO’s rehabilitation arm has been closing that gap.
There are two comprehensive centres and four satellite facilities that have treated more than 24,000 patients.
The services are deliberately wide-ranging: spasticity management and advanced wound care, speech and mental health therapy, vocational retraining and job-matching, and at the frontier, neuro-robotics.
The Tun Abdul Razak Centre in Melaka was the first facility in Asean to deploy the world’s pioneering wearable cyborg exoskeleton for neuro-rehabilitation, and the fourth worldwide.
The numbers are moving in the right direction.
Admissions across the PERKESO rehabilitation network climbed from 2,652 in 2021 to more than 6,100 last year (2025), and are targeted at nearly 8,800 for this year (2026).
Behind each of those numbers is someone who might otherwise have been written off.
Covering more contributors
This June (2026), that capacity takes another significant step forward.
The Sultan of Perak Sultan Nazrin Shah will officiate the opening of the PERKESO National Neuro-Robotics and Cybernics Rehabilitation Centre in Ipoh.
It anchors the northern region and sends a clear signal that high-specification rehabilitation will no longer be the privilege of those who happen to live within driving distance of the Klang Valley.
The timing is not incidental.
Last December (2025), Parliament passed the Employees’ Social Security (Amendment) Bill 2025, introducing the Lindung 24 Jam scheme.
For the first time, PERKESO contributors will be protected round the clock, i.e. not just during working hours and the commute, but on weekends, at home, and during the school runs and grocery runs in between.
Between 2018 and August 2024, close to 30,000 claims were rejected because the accident happened a few hours, or a few kilometres, outside the narrow definition of “work”.
A factory worker picking up his wife after her shift.
A manager whose weekend ended at an emergency room.
They were paying into the system, and the system did not cover them.
That gap is now closing for an estimated 10 million workers.
This is a meaningful achievement for the Madani government, and a quietly significant one.
Expanding social protection rarely makes for dramatic headlines; it compounds.
Stewardship of the rollout now falls to Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Ramanan Ramakrishnan, who has signalled clear intent to carry the reform through.
The ministry estimates that Lindung 24 Jam alone could save taxpayers around RM600mil in publicly-funded medical and welfare costs in its first year; precisely because injuries that would otherwise land in our overstretched public hospitals will be caught earlier and managed through rehabilitation.
But ambition creates its own stress test.
If Lindung 24 Jam behaves as designed, demand for rehabilitation (acute and post-acute, physical and vocational) will rise sharply.
The obvious risk is that infrastructure lags entitlement, resulting in longer waits, frustrated contributors and a system that promises more than it delivers.
Investing in people
Two complementary responses are already in motion.
The flagship Ipoh centre, together with the existing network, substantially expands capacity and pushes the technology frontier.
In parallel, PERKESO is building a Smart Partners network of accredited private providers, so that capacity can scale without the public sector having to build every clinic itself.
This is the right model.
It is also the harder one to execute; standards, outcomes measurement and fair reimbursement will make or break it, and the next 18 months of implementation will matter more than the ceremonies that announce them.
There is a deeper reason to get this right, and it is not only economic.
Work, for most Malaysians, is where dignity is produced; where identity, routine and social standing live.
Losing the capacity to work is not merely a loss of income; it is a loss of self.
A serious rehabilitation system takes that loss seriously.
It tells an injured welder, a stroke survivor and a young mother with a spinal injury, that the country has not given up on them and that we are prepared to invest in getting them back to gainful employment.
A society should be judged, in part, by the quality of the second chances it offers.
We are getting better at offering them.
The test now is whether we can scale that promise fast enough to meet the demand we have chosen to create.
Dr Helmy Haja Mydin is a consultant respiratory physician and Pusat Rehabilitasi PERKESO Sdn Bhd chairman. For further information, email starhealth@thestar.com.my. The information provided is for educational and communication purposes only. The Star does not give any warranty on accuracy, completeness, functionality, usefulness or other assurances as to the content appearing in this column. The Star disclaims all responsibility for any losses, damage to property or personal injury suffered directly or indirectly from reliance on such information.
