Many migrant workers have said that they prefer the Taiwanese style of celebrating the Lunar New Year holidays: days off, receiving hong bao (紅包, red envelopes filled with money) and a handsome feast.
Statistics released by the Ministry of the Interior this month showed there were 552,000 foreign workers in Taiwan as of the end of last year.
Migrant workers account for almost 70 percent of the 800,000 foreign nationals — excluding Chinese — living in Taiwan. They are currently restricted to employment as industrial laborers, domestic caretakers and maritime workers.
The report shows that 41.6 percent are from Indonesia, 27.3 percent from Vietnam and 20.2 percent from the Philippines.
Several factory owners said they have arranged for trips for their migrant workers during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Some employers said they would pay for all expenses for a two-to-three-day trip, or take their workers out for a day trip and a big meal; but some employees opt to spend the holidays with friends from their own countries, usually spending time in KTVs or going out to theme parks.
According to one Thai worker nicknamed A-tung (阿東), the owner of his factory usually treats all his foreign laborers to a sumptuous Lunar New Year’s Eve meal featuring Thai food and hands out good-sized hong bao.
“Lunar New Year has become my favorite holiday aside from [Thai New Year’s Day] Songkran Festival,” A-tung said.
Many who work as family caretakers said they might not get a vacation during the holiday, but some said their employers would let them take one or two days off because so many family members visit over the Lunar New Year.
An employment brokerage staffer nicknamed A-fen (阿芬) said she would usually negotiate with families hiring foreigners to work as domestic caretakers to give them Lunar New Year’s Day and the next day off, and most of her clients are amenable.
A-fen added that she would also arrange for the transportation and get-together for meals for the foreign laborers, saying that sometimes the clients also chipped in to help pay for the meals.
A-chin (阿金), an Indonesian caretaker who has been in Taiwan for more than seven years, said her employer has a large family, although she is usually left alone with her employer’s father, who suffers from mild dementia, and mother, who has mobility problems. However, during the Lunar New Year holidays, the house is filled with more than 10 people and she enjoys the festive atmosphere very much, she said.
“As I also take very good care of both my employer’s father and mother, my employer is very nice to me,” she said, adding that not only does she not have to cook the family meal on Lunar New Year’s eve, she does not have to wash the dishes afterwards.
She said she receives several hong bao every year from her employer, including one year when she received 12.
“Some of my happiest times have been the Lunar New Year’s holidays that I have spent in Taiwan,” she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the