Professionals and businesspeople joined Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers at a legislative hearing yesterday to demand changes to regulations that they said make Taiwan unattractive to foreigners, white-collar workers and business owners.
DPP legislators Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) and Yu Wan-ju (余宛如) collaborated with the Taiwan Thinktank to organize the hearing.
Yu said there are more than 662,000 foreign nationals holding valid work permits in Taiwan, and about 550,000 of these are caregivers or blue-collar workers.
About 17,000 people, or 2.58 percent, are foreign white-collar workers in the business, technical, engineering, media or professional sectors, teachers, researchers or missionaries.
Chung said Taiwan has to meet the challenges of globalization and the nation has a shortage of skilled workers, and it is time offer incentives and improved conditions to attract more foreign professionals.
“We have to face these problems now. There are foreign students who are studying here, and they want to stay and work in Taiwan. We have foreign professionals who are attracted by the friendly people and the lifestyle, but they get tired of the bureaucratic red tape, so they end up leaving,” he said.
Elias Ek, from Sweden, attended the hearing to talk about the problems he faced as a foreign worker. Living in Taipei for 17 years and married to a Taiwanese woman, Ek said that he is the founder and general manager of Enspyre, a B2B telemarketing firm in Taiwan.
Ek said he faces difficulty in his daily life and conducting business which Taiwanese do not, such as problems dealing with banks and applying for credit cards, and not being able to use e-commerce or make online payments because his ID number is different from those of Taiwanese.
“I went to a telecom service office to apply for a second mobile phone for a family member, but was told I cannot, because as a foreigner, government regulations mean I can only have one phone number,” he said.
“Because of the different ID number for foreigners, I am constantly reminded that I am a foreigner. My hope is to end the different treatment for people like me who have a family in Taiwan. Instead of a foreigner, I would like to be known as a Taiwanese citizen of Swedish descent,” he said.
Chung said he and DPP lawmakers would work on a labor bill and other laws which would lift the restrictions and relax rules on minimum salary, residency period requirements and professional work experience for foreign professionals.
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
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
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