The allegations involve the current SSO administrators actively participating in such irresponsible actions as introducing new services that echo the government's populist policies and making questionable investments in the property and capital markets that are not subject to stakeholder scrutiny. Caution and probity have never been the Thaksin government's strongest suits, but the SSO's complicity allows for potentially even greater damage than would occur otherwise.

New SSO initiatives attracting widespread suspicion include a change in payment arrangements to child and dental healthcare providers that would appear to benefit private hospitals, investment in the overpriced Wattachak Building and implementation of low-cost housing suspiciously similar to the government's much-criticised populist policies.

Previous governments have known better than to interfere with the SSO, preferring to keep their distance while providing adequate funding and administrative oversight. But under Thaksin Shinawatra, the SSO has been manipulated by politicians mistaking it for a government public welfare agency, thereby placing it under an extra and unnecessary financial burden. Most worrying is the government's plan to transfer to the SSO more than 15 million people now covered by the government's hugely under-funded Bt30 healthcare programme.

It is an open secret the universal healthcare scheme initiated by PM Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party is financially unsustainable in its present form. The programme requires a token co-payment of only Bt30 per hospital visit from people who make no other financial contribution, even for such costly procedures as brain surgery.

Such populist excesses explain why Thai Rak Thai continues to be so popular despite its dismal and tainted record.

Under this voluntary scheme, more than 15 million "informal" workers, including contract workers, the self-employed and even sex workers, are entitled to most SSO services previously available exclusively to existing insured workers. Each newcomer will pay only a minimum of Bt1,200 per year to be eligible for SSO services, while the government promises to contribute the same amount.

This could threaten the long-term solvency of the Social Security Fund, unless the SSO were to set up a separate fund for the purpose.

The SSO was set up in the first place to provide a wide range of services for members, from maternity, unemployment and invalid assistance to pensions and death benefits. It was never designed to provide public welfare services. Since its establishment in 1990, the SSO has grown tremendously. Today, it counts more than 8.3 million workers as members, with a staggering Bt360 billion in the Social Security Fund at its disposal. Under a tripartite system, employers and employees each contribute the equivalent of 5 per cent of the worker's salary, between a monthly minimum of Bt83 and a maximum Bt750, while the government contributes another, variable portion, depending on the state of public finances at the time.

Thaksin's caretaker government, led as it is by a lame-duck prime minister whose integrity as a politician remains very much in doubt, must not rush into a decision that will have serious implications for the SSO. It must not stoop so low as to manipulate the SSO for short-term political gain in an election year.

It's high time that insured workers under the existing SSO scheme organised themselves and made their voices heard loud and clear that any sinister move by the Thaksin government to undermine the solvency of the Social Security Fund will not be tolerated. After all, their financial security, along with that of future generations, depends on them taking exactly this sort of a principled stand against political interference in the SSO.