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Police detain 12 foreign workers in Taipei County

Police detained 12 migrant workers from Indonesia on Thursday who had run away from their jobs and hid out in an apartment in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County.

According to a spokesman for the police authorities, the 12 laborers -- one woman and 11 men -- were caught together in a small apartment in an industrial park.

An initial investigation showed that all 11 men were fishermen who worked for fishing boats registered in Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties in the south before running away to the north. The eldest is 37 years old, while the youngest is 25.

The sole female, 28, told police in fluent Chinese that she had decided to abscond because of the substandard salary she was being paid.

Working as a domestic maid, the woman said that she was paid only NT$4,000 per month, far lower than the legal minimum salary of NT$15,000.

The woman said that she and her husband, who had entered Taiwan a few months after her, had gone into hiding in the Tucheng apartment.

The other Indonesian workers living in the apartment were friends of the husband, who had left his legal job after being treated poorly by his employer, she said.

Police suspected that someone may be acting behind the scenes to incite foreign workers to leave their legal jobs, helping them hide out in Tucheng.

Police from Rueifang Township (瑞芳), Taipei County, raided the Tucheng apartment late on Thursday, acting on a tip-off that unknown foreign workers frequented the place.

Police sent 11 of them to a detention center operated by the Immigration Agency in Taipei County, while the remaining person will face the same fate once his identity has been clarified.
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