Almost one million people insured under the Thai Social Security Act, who include employers and employees, have registered to vote in the election of members of the new Social Security Committee, scheduled for December 24.

Labour Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn said today that this will be the first election of the committee since the promulgation of the Social Security Act in 1990.

A total of 247 candidates representing the employees and 69 representing employers have applied for election to choose seven representatives from each camp to sit on the committee.

A total of 945,609 employees and 4,200 employers have applied for the right to vote since registration began on October 12th and ended yesterday.

A list of the candidates will be announced on December 1st and it can be checked via www.sso.go.th or at social security offices throughout the country.

According to the Social Security Office’s report last year, there were 23.9 million insured persons in three categories. They are current employees working in business enterprises under Article 33 (about 11.2 million), former employees under Article 39 who have contributed to the Social Security Fund for 12 months and have left their jobs for not more than six months (about 1.9 million) and freelancers under Article 40 (about 10.7 million).

The Social Security Committee is authorised to propose policies and measures regarding social security to the labour minister, to map out rules governing the acceptance, disbursement and safe keeping of the Social Security Fund and to approve the accounting of the fund.

The fund was estimated to be about Bt2.3 trillion by 2020.