A middle-aged deliveryman was found unconscious on his electric scooter outside a local residential complex. He had been lying on the scooter for several hours before fellow delivery riders realized something was wrong, the witness said. The deliveryman was always seen working, taking only short breaks by lying on his scooter, according to the witness. He would immediately get back to work as soon as he received an order on his phone, the witness said... Yuan was a freelance delivery rider who took orders from various platforms including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Ele.me and Meituan...

As gig workers, such delivery riders’ income depends on the number of orders they take, while they do not receive the social insurance and other benefits that the platforms offer to regular employees.

Most delivery riders now earn between 5,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan a month...Those wages might not be enough for them to live in big cities, where the demand for ordering takeout is highest.

Yuan’s death wasn’t an isolated case. The Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau Traffic Police Corps reported in 2017 that one delivery rider was being killed or injured every 2-3 days in the city, at a time when the number of riders was nowhere near its current level.

Another issue is that riders are often recruited and hired by third-party agencies, so there is no direct relationship to the delivery platform at all. Such companies are supposed to arrange for riders to pay into social security funds and insurance policies, but many do not.

[Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Meituan and Ele.me to respond to the articles. Neither responded]