It is illegal for employers to sack foreign workers who are pregnant, have given birth or are raising children while working in Taiwan, the Ministry of Labor said on Wednesday.
Violators will have their employment permits revoked and may be fined up to NT$1.5 million (US$49,741), Minister of Labor Lin Mei-chu (林美珠) said in a report to the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.
The committee had invited ministry officials for discussions on the impact of foreign workers who give birth in Taiwan on the nation’s population policy.
The ministry said in August last year that pregnancy tests have been removed from a list of medical examinations required of foreign workers, out of respect for mothers and human rights.
The Act of Gender Equality in Employment (性別工作平等法) and the Regulations Governing Management of the Health Examination of Employed Aliens (外國人健康檢查管理辦法) prohibit employers from discriminating against or firing foreign workers if they are pregnant or give birth during their employment in Taiwan.
Employers are also banned from terminating their contracts with foreign workers early, or forcing them to leave the country if they are pregnant or give birth.
The ministry said that if foreign workers give birth during their employment and are capable of raising their children, they can stay in Taiwan, along with their children.
If they are mistreated by their employers, they can call the toll-free hotline 1955 for help, it said.
The ministry added that it has approved a proposal to subsidize institutions or foster homes that agree to look after non-Taiwanese children abandoned by their mothers after birth.
The planned subsidies, which are set to begin on June 1, will be NT$17,500 per month for each child, the ministry said, estimating that 45 children would qualify for the placement this year, for a total cost of NT$5.5 million.
Lin said the new measure was brought up at the request of the Presidential Office’s Human Rights Consultant Committee and the Executive Yuan to give humanitarian assistance to non-Taiwanese children whose mothers abandon them or are unwilling to take them back to their home countries.
Lin rebutted media reports that the government plans to spend NT$2 billion per year caring for children of foreign workers.
According to government data, from 2007 to last month, the number of children born to foreigners — including white-collar workers, students and migrant workers — exceeded 7,000.
As of Jan. 31, 121 non-Taiwanese children had been placed in social welfare institutions, including 45 whose mothers had either left Taiwan or could not be found, the data showed.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: