Some of the nation’s biggest companies would rather pay fines than hire disabled workers, several civil rights groups said in Taipei yesterday, as they urged companies to provide more jobs for people with disabilities.
The Physically and Mentally Disabled Citizens Protection Act (身心障礙者權益保障法) stipulates that private companies with at least 67 employees must reserve at least 1 percent of their jobs for disabled employees.
Companies that fail to do so have to pay a monthly fine of NT$17,880 — the minimum monthly wage for a full-time worker — for each number of person below the quota.
Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲), the secretary-general of the League of Welfare Organizations for the Disabled, said in a press conference that government figures showed that there is still a deficit of about 3,131 jobs for disabled workers in the private sector.
Among the 1,499 companies that opted to pay fines rather than hire the disabled, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), AU Optronics and United Microelectronic Corp are the top three companies that have failed to hire enough people with disabilities.
“These world-renowned companies benefit greatly from tax deduction policies and subsidies provided by the government, but they don’t want to give back to society by recruiting physically and mentally challenged workers,” she said.
TSMC paid more than NT$40 million in fines from August 2009 to September last year for refusing to hire more than 150 disabled employees, Wang said.
Lin Chin-hsing (林進興), a wheelchair user and chairman of the Development Center for the Spinal Cord-Injured, said there was no denying that it is sometimes difficult for physically challenged people to move around in a workplace, “but everyone has some sort of barrier, and just like everyone else, the physically disabled needs to work and make a living.”
Lin said that HTC Corp, one of the world’s leading smartphone makers, opened an assembly line at its Taoyuan factory last year for a group of more than 30 disabled workers, an example that proves everyone can contribute to society regardless of their physical condition.
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