The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus yesterday called into question the legitimacy of the process by which the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp hires foreign laborers.
The caucus made the inquries at a press conference during which officials from the Ministry of Justice, the Financial Supervisory Commission and Kaohsiung's Bureau of Labor Affairs were invited to discuss issues concerning the Aug. 21 riot of Thai laborers working on the Kaohsiung MRT line.
Representatives from the International Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) -- which provided the loan for the provision of the laborers' living arrangements -- were also at hand to answer questions.
ISSUES
The TSU caucus raised a number of issues, including why accommodations designed to house 800 people had 1,717 laborers living inside, as well as how it was that Hua Pan Corp, the company that managed the laborers, was able to use capital of just NT$5 million to take out a mortgage worth NT$40 million.
The caucus was particularly concerned as to why Hua Pan found it necessary to take out a mortgage to build the housing in the first place, considering that the cost of hiring each Thai laborer -- NT$29,000 -- was already supposed to include funds that would cover living arrangements.
MORTGAGE
Furthermore, the caucus wanted to know why the ICBC allowed Hua Pan to take out a mortgage eight times the amount of its capital, without the provision of a security deposit.
In response, the ICBC said that when considering an application for a mortgage, the main issues of concern were: what the mortgage was to be used for; how the borrowing party planned to pay back the loan; and what the cash-flow rate of the borrowing party was -- and not just the amount of the mortgage on its own.
TSU legislators also made accusations of embezzlement, claiming that hiring a Thai laborer required five middlemen before reaching the laborers themselves, amounting to a total sum of NT$180,000 for each Thai laborer.
MYSTERY
The lawmakers also attempted to uncover the mystery of why only NT$15,840 out of the workers' NT$29,000 monthly pay package was actually received by the laborers.
Finally, the lawmakers asked why it was that the NT$1,000 that was supposed to be deposited monthly into each Thai laborer's account since the beginning of the construction of the MRT system had never been deposited.
In response to the issues raised, representatives from the Ministry of Justice and the Financial Supervisory Commission said they could only provide initial responses, saying that due to security issues involving the investigations, they could not provide any detailed answers at present.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods