The Fisheries Agency has failed to implement new labor rules to protect foreign fishing boat workers hired outside the nation’s borders, rights advocates said yesterday, calling for stricter regulation and the transfer of jurisdiction to the Ministry of Labor.
About a dozen protesters from the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union and other groups boycotted an agency meeting on the implementation of new regulations and instead staged a protest outside the agency, shouting slogans and accusing it of continuing to allow the exploitation of foreign fishery workers.
There has been a substantial push to reform regulation of the nation’s fisheries after the European Commission in 2015 gave the nation a “yellow card” for failing to cooperate in combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, with the Act for Distant Water Fisheries (遠洋漁業條例), Act to Govern Investment in the Operation of Foreign Flag Fishing Vessels (投資經營非我國籍漁船管理條例修正) and new amendments to the Fisheries Act (漁業法) coming into effect in January.
Photo: CNA
New rules mandating a minimum monthly wage of US$450, four days off per month and 10 hours of rest per day for migrant fishermen working on Taiwanese vessels in international waters were also promulgated simultaneously by the agency after receiving a “corrective measure” from the Control Yuan for ignoring labor rights.
“The problem is that the agency does not have the ability or personnel to enforce the new regulations,” Taiwan International Workers’ Association member Chuang Shu-ching (莊舒晴) said. “More than six months have passed, but there has not been any labor inspection and there is still no channel available for workers to report violations.”
She said the jurisdiction for enforcing regulations should be transferred to the Ministry of Labor, adding that migrant fishermen working on Taiwanese vessels in international waters should also be granted the rights and protection stated in the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Currently only migrant fishermen based domestically and fishing in national waters are covered by the labor act.
“Our stance is Taiwanese-flagged vessels should be viewed as extensions of the nation’s territory and subject to the same labor rules applied domestically, regardless of where workers are hired,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights vice secretary-general Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔) said.
Fisheries Agency Deputy Director-General Huang Hung-yan (黃鴻燕) said the agency was still in process of drafting enforcement plans, with plans to base more officials in international ports to enforce regulations.
The agency only has two officials based in international ports, but it hopes to receive assistance from the labor ministry to conduct labor inspections, Huang said.
He declined to comment on the groups’ demands that responsibility for enforcement be fully transferred to the ministry.
“We have gradually started to implement” the new rules, he said, citing the registration of numerous labor agencies to hire workers following the new rules banning direct hiring by individuals and challenging the protesters to present evidence of cases of migrant workers’ rights being violated.
“We do not have investigative powers — that is the responsibility of the agency,” Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union secretary-general Allison Lee (李麗華) said, adding that regulations restricting migrant fishermen hired outside the nation’s borders from landing at national ports made it difficult to investigate.
“How are these workers supposed to report violations? There is no way boat owners will allow them to use satellite phones, and there is not any other reception to call once they are at sea,” Lee said.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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