Indonesia is to implement a plan to raise wages for its domestic workers in Taiwan, as negotiations between the two nations on the issue have not produced any concrete decisions, an Indonesian official said.
Taiwan had requested that Indonesia hold off on the pay increase, but Agusdin Subiantoro, deputy director of Indonesia’s Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (APPIMW), said workers had been waiting “too long.”
He said the APPIMW and the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei are discussing the matter and would construct a plan that would reflect fluctuations in currency exchange.
Indonesia decided to proceed with the wage increase for domestic helpers because its many rounds of meetings with Taiwan on the issue have not yielded any consensus, Subiantoro said.
In addition to Indonesia, the governments of Vietnam and the Philippines have decided to raise wages for their domestic helpers in Taiwan, Subiantoro said.
Indonesia and the Philippines earlier this month informed Taiwan that they had decided to increase the monthly wage for their domestic helpers in Taiwan from NT$15,840 to NT$17,500 (US$502 to US$555).
Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor protested the move by the two nations and asked that they delay implementation of the policy until they reached an agreement with Taiwan on the issue.
On July 1, Taiwan implemented a minimum monthly wage increase from NT$19,273 to NT$20,008, but foreign domestic workers are not included because their pay is not covered by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Taiwan has said that if the cost of providing food and lodging for foreign domestic workers was taken into consideration, their pay would be “close to” the local minimum wage.
Indonesia, with about 210,000 employees in Taiwan, is the leading supplier of migrant workers to Taiwan, followed by Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, according to an ANTARA News report.
Nearly 15 percent of Indonesian migrant workers are employed in the manufacturing and construction sector, 80 percent work as domestic helpers, and between 3 percent and 4 percent are employed as ship crew members.
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