A group of 50 people has been recruited by the Council of Agriculture to help the local dairy farming sector, which like many other old-economy businesses is plagued by a shortage of workers.
Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢) on Monday said that it is one of the ways the council is trying to bring new blood into agriculture to avoid having to bring in foreign workers to fill the shortage of labor.
“The government would only consider hiring migrant workers on farms as a last resort to prevent a hollowing-out of the nation’s rural areas,” Lin said.
The 50 recruits are to help out at local dairy farms for six months after being trained for a month, Department of Farmers’ Services head Chu Chien-wei (朱建偉) said.
The council would only discuss with the Ministry of Labor the possibility of bringing in foreign workers for dairy farms if the domestic recruitment program does not work, Chu said.
“The Ministry of Labor would never agree to having foriegn laborers working on farms if we do not first try to resolve the problem” with domestic workers, Chu added.
The latest initiative is part of a training program to cultivate local agricultural talent which was launched a year ago.
The Council of Agriculture has trained about 600 workers who have filled about 10 percent of the job openings in the agricultural sector over that time, Chu said.
In related news, a referendum being held by the Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan has suggested a large majority of people continue to back migrant workers’ rights.
According to the latest update on the poll released on Friday last week, 6,355 ballots were cast from Sept. 17 to Oct. 29 on three issues.
Of those votes, 6,283 supported the right of migrant workers to switch employers freely, 6,296 backed giving foreign caregivers legal protection under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) and 6,290 favored abolishing the private brokerage system.
The mock referendum, in which anybody can vote, is being held in an attempt to give a voice to migrant workers and urge lawmakers to include them in the Labor Standards Act.
Foreign nationals working as live-in caregivers cannot switch employers freely, are not covered by the Labor Standards Act and invariably use brokers to find employment, which means they have to pay high brokerage fees.
The voting runs until Dec. 10, with 15 designated voting areas nationwide. The ballot opens every two weeks.
The Migrants Empowerment Network in Taiwan plans to announce the final results at a migrant workers’ parade on Dec. 17.
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
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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