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Manila hopes to change brokerage system

The government of the Philippines is planning to ask Taiwan to abolish its existing labor brokerage system for the employment of Filipino workers, an official from the Philippine Ministry of Labor and Employment said yesterday.

Reynaldo Gopez, the representative of the Philippine Ministry of Labor and Employment in Taiwan, said the Philippines will propose during the upcoming Taiwan-Philippines Joint Economic Cooperation Conference to be held in Manila next month that Taipei relax and expand a special employment program regarding Filipino workers to replace the existing system, which is basically a brokerage system.

The need for a new employment program is pressing and imperative to prevent Filipino workers from being exploited by labor brokers from both Taiwan and the Philippines, Gopez said.

Gopez said that during his recent visit to Taiwan, he has heard complaints from many Filipino workers that labor brokerage systems take huge slices of their NT$15,800 (US$470) monthly incomes and that "brokerage fees" have to be paid on a monthly basis, instead of just once.

The workers complained that they are required to pay NT$1,800 to the brokers in the first month of employment, followed by NT$1,700 in the second month and NT$1,500 in the third month and every month after that, Gopez said.

The workers also have to pay for their own health insurance, income tax and sometimes pay for their accommodation, Gopez said.

He added that his office was told by Taiwan's labor affairs authorities that the NT$1,800 or NT$1,500 monthly payments are not "brokerage fees" but a kind of so-called "management payment." This payment supposedly covers charges for matching the workers and their potential employers, charges for employment procedures and travel costs.

However, Gopez said, the Philippine government hopes this monthly fee will be paid by the employers rather than by the Filipino workers.

Gopez added that the existing brokerage system is also one of the causes behind unauthorized abrogation of contracts with Filipino workers by their Taiwan employers.

According to officials from the Philippine Ministry of Labor and Employment, Taiwan has become the world's fifth-largest and Asia's third-largest overseas job market for Filipino workers.

Currently there are about 100,000 Filipino workers in Taiwan, making them the second-largest foreign worker group in the country after the Thais, the officials said.
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