Denying migrant caregivers one day off a week is a breach of basic human rights and labor rights, for which the culture of the destination country is partly to blame, and “that needs to be reformed,” a visiting Philippine academic said in Taipei on Thursday.
Migrants working as domestic helpers deserve a minimum of one day’s rest every seven days, “but in many countries, people don’t value their work very much,” Philippine Migration Research Network secretary-general Jorge Villamor Tigno said at an international workshop on strategies to combat human trafficking, which was hosted by the National Immigration Agency.
Tigno, who is also a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines Diliman, said that while this very basic human right has not yet been enshrined in Taiwan’s laws, the nation “has improved a lot” in terms of the public’s attitude toward migrant workers.
It takes a combination of programs to facilitate such a change in people’s mentality, including in school teachers and government bureaucrats, Tigno said.
Taiwan is the seventh-largest destination for overseas Philippine workers, accounting for 5 percent of them in 2016, Tigno said.
According to Taiwan’s labor rights organizations, 60 percent of migrant caregivers in Taiwan do not have one fixed day off a week, while most of those who do are given a rest period of no longer than 12 hours — just five or six hours in some cases.
The international standard of 24 hours of uninterrupted rest every seven days is a right that migrant domestic caretakers in Hong Kong are entitled to, Justice Center Hong Kong research director Jade Anderson said.
“I am just starting to learn about the situation in Taiwan. In some respects, there is much less regulation around working conditions,” she said, commenting on the lack of legal protection in Taiwan.
In her presentation, Anderson shared findings from a 2016 study that covered more than 1,000 migrant domestic workers, saying that generating evidence and engaging in evidence-based dialogue when advocating for legislative and policy reform are among her organization’s tasks.
“Effective prevention of trafficking requires evidence. We need evidence of not just what is happening, but how it is happening and why it is happening,” she said.
Her center is interested in conducting research with organizations in Taiwan, she added.
The widespread problem of forced labor in the fishing industry was another major issue discussed at the workshop.
Indonesia Fishermen Foundation chief executive officer Ismail Situmeang shared harrowing stories of Indonesian crew members being physically abused or forfeiting their salaries while working for Taiwanese, Chinese and South Korean fishing companies.
“I think the situation in Taiwan’s fishing industry is changing. I hope it will improve more,” he said. “If there are no fishermen from Indonesia or the Philippines, there will be a problem in the supply of seafood.”
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