A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator and a labor rights group yesterday accused President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of breaking a campaign promise not to open the market to Chinese workers, after the Council of Agriculture began allowing Chinese fishermen to operate at a fishing port and announced plans to extend the measures.
On Aug. 12, while attending a National Fisheries Conference, Ma said the government would loosen restrictions, allowing Chinese fishermen to work in fenced off, monitored areas at certain fishing ports to help their employers with a wider array of tasks.
Ma said at the time that it would be unreasonable to ban the fishermen from performing certain tasks if they were allowed to work at the ports.
The government expanded the fenced-off port area for Chinese workers at Nanfangao (南方澳) fishing port in Ilan County on Aug. 5 to allow them to perform tasks such as unloading cargo.
The area measures 120m by 50m. Chinese fishermen are allowed to unload cargo, prepare fishing bait, and repair nets in the area — tasks the labor group argues should be done by domestic workers.
Wuchi (梧棲) fishing port in Taichung County will have a fenced off area for Chinese workers by the end of this year, followed by Badouzih (八斗子) in Keelung, Nanliao (南寮) in Hsinchu City and Donggang (東港) in Pingtung County next year.
Fisheries Agency officials said Chinese fishermen would be able to earn money doing tasks on shore.
DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) yesterday criticized the changes, saying they posed a threat to social order and the rights of domestic workers.
She expressed concern that the port shelters could be repeatedly expanded to include more workers and processing facilities.
Taiwan Labor Front head Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said the unemployment rate was high because of the global financial crisis, with more than 1,000 workers losing their jobs each day.
The government should create jobs for locals rather than importing cheap Chinese labor, he said.
In response, Fisheries Agency Director James Sha (沙志一) said the areas in which Chinese fishermen operate on shore would be fenced off with steel bars and monitored by cameras and that employers would be responsible for their behavior.
In addition, Chinese fishermen will only be allowed to work at the areas between 8am and 5pm and the maximum number of workers allowed at each area at any given time will be 100, he said.
Sha said the fishing industry had been suffering a serious manpower shortage for years because local workers do not want to take the jobs.
The agency has tried to attract local workers with monthly subsidies to no avail, he said.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
RSS