The government needs to better ensure foreign workers are placed into the sectors of the economy that really need them, according to participants in a recent seminar sponsored by the Council of Labor Affairs.
Experts, workers and representatives from small and medium-sized businesses urged the council to distribute foreign workers in labor-intensive traditional and small businesses according to the businesses' needs.
Council Vice Chairman Kuo Chi-jen (
TSU Legislator Huang Zone-yuan (黃宗源) said there is wide support in the industrial community for a stricter foreign labor policy with quota allocations for different sectors, but he added that there is discontent over the council's labor distribution system and the feeling that it needs to be revised.
Council statistics show that as of the end of June, more than 160,000 foreign workers were employed in the manufacturing sector, accounting for about 52 percent of the total 307,538 working here.
Of these 160,000 workers, some 60,000 were allocated to hi-tech industries, a figure that experts claim is too large for the sector, while a serious labor shortage facing small businesses remains unresolved.
Council officials admitted that compared to high-tech industries, traditional and small businesses need foreign workers more urgently to fill their vacancies. But they pointed out that the NT$200 million investment threshold means that many of them are unable to apply for imported foreign labor.
The number of foreign workers employed as of June rose 2,216 from May, the second monthly rise after 13 consecutive falls.
Council officials attributed a strong demand for foreign caregivers to the surge of more than 7,000 foreign workers in two months.
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