Filipinos in Taiwan said on Sunday that they welcomed the government’s lifting of a freeze on the hiring of workers from the Philippines as part of sanctions imposed due to Manila’s handling of the fatal shooting of a Taiwanese fisherman.
“We’re so happy,” Samuel Bagos, who has spent one-and-a-half years in Taiwan, said when asked to comment on the latest development in ties between the two countries.
Philippine workers who are already in Taiwan “can work here again,” the 24-year-old said, referring to Taiwan as a “peaceful place.”
Photo: EPA
He is waiting to be transferred to work in a factory in Taoyuan next month.
Bagos added that the announcement of the lifting of the freeze on hiring Filipinos was also a relief for many of his friends and relatives who had wanted to come here to work or had reapplied to work in the country.
He had also called his friends back in the Philippines, to inform them of the news, saying that “they are happy” about it.
Taganahan Lilia Tomecos shared Bagos’ views.
“I’m so happy, not just for me, but for all Filipino workers,” said Taganahan, a 59-year-old domestic caregiver, whose contract is set to expire at the end of this month.
Taganahan said she can now renew her contract and follow through with her plan to work for two more years in Taiwan to support her daughter until she graduates from college and to save some money to cultivate a plot of land and rebuild her house in the Philippines.
Many of her friends who were concerned about their work status in Taiwan are also thrilled about the lifting of the labor freeze, said Taganahan, who has been working in Taiwan for six years.
On Thursday last week, the government declared a lifting of all 11 sanctions against Manila over the shooting death of 65-year-old fisherman Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) by Philippine Coast Guard personnel on May 9, when his fishing boat, the Kuang Ta Hsing No. 28, was operating in the overlapping exclusive economic zones of the two countries.
The hiring freeze took effect on May 15. The Council of Labor Affairs said it would resume processing applications for hiring Filipinos, on Friday last week.
“It’s good news,” said a woman from the Philippines, who only identified herself as Jocelyn.
Many Philippine nationals want to work in Taiwan to earn relatively higher salaries than in their home country, said the 42-year-old, who works as a caregiver in Taoyuan.
The Filipinos also said they were happy to see both countries become “friends again.”
Meriam Hsu, a social worker with the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, feels positive about the lifting of the labor freeze, but stressed that it was “unfair” for Filipino workers to have suffered the consequences of something that was not their fault.
The decision to lift the sanctions came in the wake of a recommendation by the Philippines’ National Bureau of Investigation to bring homicide charges against eight Philippine Coast Guard officers involved in the shooting, as well as an apology offered in person by an envoy of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to Hung’s family.
The Philippine government has also reached an agreement with the family regarding the details of a compensation package, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday last week.
The hiring freeze has affected more than 14,000 Philippine citizens, including about 10,000 whose applications for the renewal of their work permits were not processed after their original permits expired, the council said.
As of the end of June, there were 462,658 foreign workers in Taiwan, including about 87,000 from the Philippines.
Meanwhile, Philippine workers disagreed with recent remarks by the Philippines’ national men’s basketball coach, Chot Reyes, who said that workers from the Philippines had suffered a great deal of abuse in Taiwan.
There may be “a few” cases of workers suffering abuse at the hands of Taiwanese employers, but it is not a widespread problem, Bagos said.
Taganahan said that she believes physical abuse is rare, and most Filipinos in Taiwan have simply encountered aloofness since the shooting incident.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods