A book published by the Migrant Empowerment Network in Taiwan (MENT), which gives a voice to migrant workers, and their stories of exploitation and abuse under Taiwan’s private broker system, was launched at a news conference in Taipei on Saturday.
The book, titled Migrant Worker’s Storybook of Employment Agents, depicts the real-life accounts of 15 migrants who were allegedly abused and exploited by brokers while working in the nation.
One author, identified only as Wiwin, a 24-year-old migrant worker from Indonesia, said that her father pawned his rice paddy for US$1,824 so that she could give an employment agency in Jakarta the US$1,672 needed to secure a factory job in Taiwan.
Although registered by her Indonesian broker as a caregiver, Wiwin’s Taiwanese broker had her work in a local factory — but the conditions were abusive.
“I would never have imagined that brokers in Indonesia and Taiwan would do this to me,” Wiwin said. “I ended up working a huge amount of hours, from 5am to 11pm.”
Wiwin says in the book that she received a monthly salary of US$550, but had to work overtime every shift, roasting all of the bean curd sheets made during the day before being released from work.
“The factory job was inhumane and the broker did not take any responsibility for my welfare,” Wiwin said. “If I told them about my problems, they would just tell me to go back to Indonesia.”
However, Wiwin said that returning to Indonesia was not an option, because of the debt that her father had taken on so that she could work in Taiwan.
After working at the factory for two years, she requested help from a non-governmental agency (NGO), which helped her report her case to the National Immigration Agency.
The NGO that gave Wiwin assistance is a member of the MENT, a coalition of a dozen migrant rights groups, Taiwan International Workers’ Association researcher Wu Jing-ru (吳靜如) said, adding that Wiwin is temporarily working another job while her case is being investigated.
Wu did not disclose the location of Wiwin’s first employer, saying only it was in northern Taiwan.
Wiwin’s story is just one of many in the book, which took over a year to compile and has been translated into six languages — Chinese, English, Indonesian, Filipino, Vietnamese and Thai, Hsinchu Catholic Diocese Migrants and Immigrants Service Center director Gracie Liu (劉曉櫻) said.
Ministry of Labor statistics showed that brokers placed 275,715 migrant workers in 2017 and 242,021 in 2018, while employers directly hired only 10,302 migrant workers in 2017 and 9,061 in 2018.
One of the reasons that the brokerage system is heavily used is that the agents stay up to date with the procedures to keep migrants employed in Taiwan and handle all of the paperwork, the ministry said.
Foreign brokers also help local companies screen and select candidates before the workers come to Taiwan, something that many Taiwanese companies cannot handle alone.
Taiwanese companies employ 718,186 workers from Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, with most working as factory workers, caregivers and domestic helpers, ministry statistics released in November last year showed.
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