The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) yesterday announced it will change the application process for hiring foreign caregivers, in a move lauded by local hiring agencies charged with finding 24-hour medical help for the infirm.
CLA Chairman Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said that medical authorities will professionally assess whether the employment of a foreign caregiver is warranted, and that the so-called "Barthel" index will no longer be applied.
Currently, a Taiwanese family wishing to hire a foreign caregiver must submit the index, which gives scores from zero to 100 to assess the degree of disability in a person under strict criteria.
Local hiring agencies have described the criteria as much too strict, applicable only to those who are "almost dead."
They said at least 50 per cent of Taiwanese who need 24-hour caregivers' help are barred from employing foreign caregivers because they can still walk despite their feeble condition.
The new measures will be put into place as soon as possible, Lee said.
Previously a medical physician assessed a patient's needs using the Barthel Index and then forwarded the information directly to the CLA.
This has led to some cases of fraud, with applications which weren't really necessary being approved.
Under the new policy, applications for hiring foreign health care laborers will first pass through the Department of Health (DOH) for approval.
Then they will go to the Department of Social affairs under the MOI, which will spend two weeks seeing if a suitable domestic health care worker can be employed. From there, an application will go to the CLA.
The Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training under the CLA will hold a meeting with the DOH next week to discuss what and how assessment procedures will take place.
Lee said yesterday that currently, the MOI has trained around 9,000 Taiwanese national health care laborers, 4,000 of whom have licenses and 700 who are Aborigines.
Despite lowering the bar for the hiring of foreign health workers by eliminating the Barthel index, applications will still only be approved if a domestic worker cannot be found.
"Protecting the rights of Taiwanese national laborers is our first priority," Lee said.
Lee also said that agencies who hire Taiwanese nationals may be subsidized by the government to encourage local hiring. However, details of how that would take place are to be further discussed with the governing bodies involved, Lee said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,