The Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) is considering loosened restrictions for families hiring foreign caretakes for their homes. If the legislation passes, families with two people older than 80 could qualify to hire foreign workers.
Hiring foreign caretakers has become increasingly popular in recent years because of their relatively low cost. Foreign home-care workers can cost as little as one-half to one-third the salary of Taiwanese. However, not all families are legally qualified to hire foreign caretakers.
The current method for evaluating whether a family qualifies to hire foreign help is based on how many members of the family live in the same residence qualify as needing extra care, such as young children or the elderly.
Those needing medical assistance may apply to hire foreign caregivers based on the Barthel Index, a list of items that measure a person’s ability to perform day-to-day activities, such as eating at a normal rate of about one bite every 10 seconds. One of the main differences between qualifying to hire foreign home workers and foreign caregivers is that the latter require medical certificates.
Recently, council officials began considering a proposed amendment to the Employment Service Act (就業服務法) that would loosen restrictions governing which households may qualify to hiring foreign help.
For example, the score given to elderly people over 80 years old could be more heavily weighted, so that applicant households with two immediate family members older than 80 could be eligible to apply for foreign help.
Another example would state that if a household has one family member over 90 years of age and another under one year old, it would be allowed to hire foreign help.
The council said that if the legislation passes, the number of foreign home workers in the country would double from the current 2,300 to about 5,000.
Although council officials say the plan would meet the nation’s increasing need for care for the elderly, some labor group representatives remain cautious.
Son Yu-lian (孫友聯), secretary-general of the Taiwan Labour Front, said the plan was worth discussing, but called on the council to hold public hearings
“The Council of Labor Affairs should obtain some public consensus before jumping into policymaking,” he 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,