President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that foreign migrant workers are overworked and her government is hoping to better protect their rights.
Human rights protection is an important issue, Tsai said in a meeting with US Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons Susan Coppedge, who is a senior adviser to US Secretary of State John Kerry.
“At present, there are still some foreign workers in Taiwan who are severely overworked, or are forced to work in highly hazardous or physically exhausting jobs,” Tsai was quoted as saying in a statement released by the Presidential Office after the closed-door meeting.
The president said she hopes to better protect the rights of such workers and wants to assure the international community of the nation’s efforts to safeguard human rights, the statement said.
Coppedge touted Taiwan’s efforts to combat human trafficking, noting that the nation is listed as a “tier” 1 country — those that are doing the best job — in the annual Trafficking in Persons report released by the US Department of State last month, the statement said.
Coppedge is in Taipei for an international workshop on combating human trafficking that is being organized by the National Immigration Agency.
As of the end of last month, there were 602,309 foreign migrant workers in Taiwan, with Indonesia accounting for the largest number, followed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, Ministry of Labor statistics showed.
Migrant workers have long been calling for better wages and working hours, as well as regular days off. Foreign domestic helpers and caregivers are not protected under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching