The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) plans to bring the authorization of employment of all foreign personnel entirely under its own auspices from next month, simplifying and accelerating the process by which work permits are issued, officials from the council said yesterday.
The proposed system would require all foreign professionals to apply directly to the council for their permits, instead of to the ministry regulating their specific industry, as at present.
The CLA already handles all applications from foreign manual workers. The new system would reduce the length of time taken to process an application from seven days to five.
"To make the recruitment of foreign professionals easier for local companies, we think that streamlining the process of work-permit applications is crucial," said Kuo Fong-yu (郭芳煜), director of the CLA's Employment and Vocation Training Administration.
Currently, work-permit applications for foreign professionals are handled by different government agencies, depending on their occupations. Banking professionals submit applications to the Ministry of Finance, media professionals to the Government Information Office, and so on.
But it is the CLA that ultimately issues the work permit, following the relevant ministry's approval. The process, however, is considered time-consuming and not the most effective approach to regulating the recruitment of foreign professionals.
The CLA started to amend current regulations and draft new rules to introduce the change last year. The change was originally planned to be introduced in January, but has been postponed because of administrative delays.
Kuo said that the draft proposal of the new measures has yet to be reviewed by the Cabinet, while the Central Personnel Administration has delayed approval of the council's request for approximately 400 additional personnel to support the change.
Under the proposal, the council will assume almost exclusive responsibility for the issuing of work permits and the regulation of the employment of foreign professionals, manual workers and students, as well as overseas Chinese.
Applications for work permits by professionals requiring professional certification, such as doctors, lawyers and flight crews, however, will still be conducted by the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, respectively.
The CLA said that it would handle applications in accordance with the same criteria currently used by individual ministries.
The draft proposal also stipulates that employers intending to hire foreign staff must have been officially registered with the government for at least a year and possess at least NT$5 million in capital.
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