About SOCSO a.k.a. PERKESO

Most of us as employee in Malaysia contribute to SOCSO (Social Security Organisation) a.k.a. PERKESO (Pertubuhan Keselamatan Social) every month. SOCSO contribution is deducted from our salary by our employer in a similar way to EPF a.k.a. KWSP contribution. Also similar to EPF, our employer is also required to contribute to our SOCSO account in addition to our own contribution, and the employer's portion is larger than the employee's.

In fact, under the current Employee’s Security Act, SOCSO contribution is compulsory for all Malaysian employee with monthly salary less than RM3,000. It is optional for those with starting salary above RM3,000. Under the "once in always in" principal, once we become a SOCSO member and contributed to SOCSO, we will continue to be member even though our salary increased to above RM3,000 later.

This salary ceiling of RM3,000 for SOCSO contribution was revised from the previous ceiling of RM2,000 on 10 September 2003 by the Malaysian Cabinet with amendments made to Act.

Foreign workers are not covered by SOCSO. They are protected under a separate Workmen's Compensation Act 1952 instead.

Currently, our MyKad identity number is also used as our SOCSO membership number.

So what are the benefits of being a SOCSO member?

There are 2 types of protection scheme for SOCSO members, namely the Employment Injury Insurance Scheme and the Invalidity Pension Scheme.

The Employment Injury Insurance Scheme provides protection to employees who are involved in accidents arising from out of employment, occupational diseases and also commuting accident, while the Invalidity Pension Scheme provides 24 hours coverage for workers from invalidity or dies irrespective of the cause of death.

Employees with age below 55 are covered under both the 2 schemes, and those above 55 are covered under the Employment Injury Insurance Scheme.

A SOCSO member or dependants will be entitled to the following benefits :

• Periodical payments in the case of invalidity.
• Periodical payments in the case of disablement suffered as a result of an employment injury.
• Periodical payments to the dependants of member who dies as a result of an employment injury.
• Payments for funeral benefit or expense on the death of member as a result of an employment injury.
• Periodical payments to member who is in receipt of invalidity pension or disablement benefit and is so severely incapacitated or disabled as to require the personal attendance of another person.
• Medical treatments for the attendance on member suffering from disablement.
• Periodical payments to dependants of member who dies while in receipt of invalidity pension.
  

PeaZip the powerful free and open source file archiver

Similar to 7-Zip which I introduced in the blog earlier, PeaZip is another free and open source file archiver licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). It is developed in FreePascal.

PeaZip can deploy fast compression in ZIP and TAR.GZ formats, or very efficient speed / high compression ratio tradeoff in 7Z, BZ or ARC formats, or even highest levels of compression using PAQ family algorithms. It can handle many archive and compression formats both from Windows and Unix worlds, ranging from mainstream TAR and ZIP formats to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ, including:

• Full support: 7Z, 7Z-sfx, ARC/WRC, BZ2/TBZ2, GZ/TGZ, PAQ/LPAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, split, TAR, UPX, ZIP;
• Open, browse, extract, test: ACE, ARJ, CAB, CHM, COMPOUND (MSI, DOC, XLS, PPT), CPIO, ISO, Java (JAR, EAR, WAR), Linux (DEB, PET/PUP, RPM, SLP), LHA/LZH, LZMA, NSIS, OOo, PAK/PK3/PK4, RAR, SMZIP, U3P, WIM, XPI, Z/TZ.
  

It also supports features such as robust file copy, split/join files, quick or secure file deletion, byte to byte file compare, checksum/hash files, system benchmark, generate random passwords and keyfiles.

The same features and look and feel is available to all Windows version and also on Linux. It is also available in standalone portable apps format which does not require installation to use.

PeaZip is focused on security and supports multiple encrypted archive formats:

• 7Z, with AES256 encryption;
• ARC, with AES256, Blowfish, Twofish256 and Serpent256 encryption;
• PEA, with AES256 authenticated encryption (EAX mode);
• ZIP with WinZip's AE encryption based on AES256.
  

PeaZip is powerful. You can click here to download and try it out.

The 51th independence day of Malaysia

On the 31 August of every year, Malaysia will commemorate the independence of the Federation of Malaya since 1957 from British colonial rule. This day is the Independence Day a.k.a. Merdeka Day of Malaysia.

The Merdeka Theme for year 2008 will be "Perpaduan Teras Kejayaan" (Unity Is The Pillar of Success), and the logo will be as below:

This logo was chosen from a contest which saw some 800 entries, with the winner Anuar Dan walking away with RM10,000 for his entry.

To recall, the Federation of Malaysia, comprising the States of Malaya, North Borneo (now Sabah), Sarawak and Singapore was also planned to be officially declared on the date of 31 August 1963, which is the 6th anniversary of Malayan independence. However, it was postponed to 16 September 1963 then, which was coincidently also the birthday of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore. Singapore left the federation two years later. 16 September is Malaysia Day, which is not declared as public holiday.