New rules came into effect on Friday aimed at cracking down on runaway foreign workers, with agencies facing multiple fines and withdrawal of licenses to operate if a certain number of the workers they introduce into Taiwan abscond from their workplaces.
Under the new regulations, the Ministry of Labor decreased the proportion of foreign workers allowed to go missing before it takes action, capping it at between 2.45 percent and 10 percent of the total number of workers brought in by an agency depending on the size of the firm.
That range was narrower than the 3.1 percent to 18.7 percent previously set by the ministry.
Agencies face fines of up to NT$300,000 (US$9,822) for exceeding the limit. The government plans to immediately shut down agencies that are fined four times in a year under the new rules, which means an estimated 5 percent of agencies could be shut down.
However, labor advocates for migrant workers said the measure did not address the problems that caused the migrant workers to want to break the terms of their contracts in the first place.
Migrant workers have highly inflexible contracts with employers and agencies, Taiwan International Worker’s Association researcher Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如) said.
“A heavy debt to a brokerage and the inability to leave their employer means migrant workers are often afraid to speak out about the difficulties they face, and run away as a last resort,” Wu said.
“What we see here is a voluntary human trafficking system,” Wu added, saying that if the contracts remain the same, the new fines instituted by the ministry might only exacerbate the “harsh surveillance” of the agencies.
Taiwan has 1,500 agencies that bring workers from overseas and assign them to Taiwanese employers.
As of last month, Taiwan was home to more than 530,000 migrant workers, mostly from Southeast Asian nations, currently limited to employment as industrial laborers, marine workers and household caretakers.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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