The government is considering allowing families that have a second child to hire foreign nannies in an attempt to raise the country’s low birth rate — one of the world’s lowest; but labor affairs authorities disagree with the proposal.
Chiu Yueh-yun (邱月雲), a Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) official responsible for foreign labor management, said there is no substantial connection between allowing child-bearing families to employ foreign caregivers and the growth in the birth rate of a country.
“From worldwide experiences, there is no case that shows the import of foreign caregivers has helped raise the birth rate,” she said.
As a result, the CLA will not endorse the proposal initiated by other government agencies to encourage local couples to have children, Chiu said.
Under the existing regulations on employing foreign household caregivers, only families with at least three children aged under six are elegible to hire a foreign nanny.
The cost of hiring foreign caregivers is much lower than employing Taiwanese to do the same job.
Meanwhile, Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said that relaxing -restrictions on employing foreign workers would not help ordinary working class families. He said it would only benefit rich people because they are the only ones who have the money to hire people to tend to their children.
As Taiwan ages and its birth rate declines, the government is being forced to come up with measures to tackle the problem.
According to the Ministry of the Interior’s latest statistics on births in the country, Taiwan’s birth rate has fallen to 8.29 births per 1,000 people in 2009, a record low.
Council for Economic Planning and Development Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) said on Friday that allowing families with a second child to hire foreign caregivers is an option for the government to consider as it tries to help families cut down on the costs of raising children.
The council has found that since most women will continue to work after marriage, they are faced with a “job or kids” dilemma.
“Some people just hate to send their children to child-care centers, “Liu said.
If such people are forced to choose between having a baby and keeping their job, some will decide not to bear children, she added.
However, Liu agreed that there should be multiple strategies to ease the burden on families with children, in order to raise the birth rate.
She said that after collecting proposals from all the relevant government agencies, her office would present a set of workable measures on the issue within the next few weeks.
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