A dispute between rights groups and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Pan Meng-an (潘孟安) over a proposed amendment to the Fisheries Act (漁業法) continued yesterday as groups rebutted Pan’s remarks on Thursday that he made the proposal to further benefit foreign deckhands, not to sacrifice their rights.
“The Legislative Yuan’s Economic Committee earlier gave initial passage to an amendment to the Fisheries Act proposed by Pan, which would exclude foreign deckhands from being mandatorily covered by social insurances, such as labor insurance and the National Health Insurance [NHI],” a statement issued jointly by several migrant and labor rights groups said.
The groups included the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, the Migrant Empowerment Network Taiwan, the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, the Yilan County Fishermen’s Trade Union, and the Taiwan Committee for Philippine Concerns.
“If the amendment becomes law, the image of Taiwan as a country that exploits foreign workers would stand out more in the world,” it said.
The statement said that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — which were both adopted by the Legislative Yuan in 2009 as domestic laws — say both foreign and local employees should be treated equally, and thus the amendment may be in violation of the two covenants.
The statement was made following Pan’s response on Thursday to a protest by the groups outside the Legislative Yuan.
Pan said that his amendment proposal was aimed to give foreign sailors more options, since they are sometimes on the sea for months and could not enjoy the benefits of social insurances, but still have to pay the monthly premiums.
With the option of commercial insurances, Pan said, they might be able to find more suitable plans.
“There is no need to amend the law to ‘give more options,’ as the law currently does not prohibit foreign deckhands from buying commercial insurances,” the statement said.
“In fact, while coverage by social insurances is mandatory according to the law, the government is not doing its job to make sure that all foreign sailors are covered by social insurances — and the situation may become worse as new options are added since there would be more loopholes,” it added.
At the moment, many employers are deducting insurances fees from foreign workers’ salaries without actually buying insurances for them, the statement said.
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