Hong Kong delivery rider Raj Bhattarai* felt the pain – both physically and financially – after a vehicle rear-ended his motorcycle on the job about a year ago. Bhattarai, who is in his forties, spent a month on sick leave with a back injury and waited 10 months before he received compensation for the accident. “It is not enough at all,” said the father of one young child and the family’s sole breadwinner. As the gig economy grows, workers like Bhattarai and their unions are calling on the government to do more to protect their rights. For a start, they want payouts under a proposed statutory work injury compensation scheme for gig workers – the first such initiative in the city – to be based on longer-term income averages, and for logged-on waiting time to be treated as protected working hours.