The Ministry of Labor on Saturday said that any Indonesian nurses coming to Taiwan to work would not be permitted to provide medical services until obtaining the required local licenses.
If trained nurses from abroad were brought in by a human resources agency, the nurses would need to be licensed in Taiwan to work as healthcare professionals, the ministry’s Workforce Development Agency Deputy Director-General Tsai Meng-liang (蔡孟良) said.
Tsai was responding to questions about an Indonesian national daily newspaper report that 100 Indonesian nurses are being recruited to work in Taiwan from early next year to provide home care services to patients.
The initiative was stipulated in a cooperation agreement signed on Thursday last week between the National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers and an undisclosed human resources agency based in Taiwan, the Republika newspaper reported.
Under the agreement, 100 trained nurses from Indonesia will arrive in Taiwan early next year to work in the homes of patients who need such care, the report said, citing Ricky Adriansjah, who heads the Tangerang office of the Indonesian national agency.
The nurses must have a bachelor’s degree and at least three months of Mandarin language training, Adriansjah said in the report, adding that it is the first time Indonesia is to send medical professionals to work in Taiwan.
However, Tsai said the government has not made a request for Indonesia to send trained nurses and that a special license would be required for such professionals to work in Taiwan.
Most likely, the arrangements are being made because Taiwanese employers conveyed the need for such workers to the Indonesian government through the brokers, he said.
The ministry’s Cross-Border Workforce Management official Hsueh Chien-chung (薛鑑忠) expressed a similar view, saying that the initiative most likely resulted from requests by employers who would prefer to have trained nurses providing home care to their patients and elderly people.
Indonesians make up 187,281 of the 243,151 foreign nationals performing jobs related to social welfare in Taiwan and account for 77 percent of all caregivers in the nation who are foreign nationals.
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