Labor activists panned government plans to seek new sources of foreign labor, following an announcement by Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla on Friday that his nation would bar the export of female workers within five years.
Although business groups in Taiwan urged the government to procure new sources of foreign labor in other Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia or Laos, labor advocates are critical of the idea.
According to a report from the Jakarta Globe, Kalla voiced his concerns about the “mental and physical abuse” Indonesian women suffer from while working abroad and vowed to create more jobs in the domestic agricultural sector.
Chen Su-hsiang (陳素香), a member of the Taiwan International Worker Association, said it was understandable that the Indonesian government wants to protect the labor rights of Indonesian workers.
“The labor conditions for migrant workers in Taiwan are abysmal, as domestic caretakers are typically paid less than minimum wage,” Chen said, adding that this is not the first time the Indonesian government has commented on the issue.
Since Taiwan hosts the largest number of Indonesian female migrants working as domestics, the ban could be interpreted as a move to protest the labor conditions of migrant workers in Taiwan, she added.
Labor activist Wong Ying-dah (汪英達), a member of the Serve the People Association in Taoyuan, said it took the government and labor organizations years to establish counseling services for migrant workers in four languages — Tagalog, Thai, Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesian.
“Our current system is already strained in ensuring the labor rights of migrant workers. Is the government committed to providing services for workers from yet another country?” Wong said.
“Current regulations allow only one foreign domestic helper for each household, which puts a 24-hour burden on many migrant workers who take care of seniors,” Wong said, adding that the government should establish public long-term care services for Taiwan’s aging society, instead of relying on foreign labor.
As for complaints about the shortage of domestic workers, Wong said companies should simply raise their wages instead of “exploiting new sources of cheap labor.”
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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