The Fisheries Agency’s response to Thursday’s protest in front of the Presidential Office Building calling for an end to the abuse of migrant fishermen in the nation’s deep-sea fishing fleet was so waterlogged that it deserves to sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.
An alliance of human rights groups urged President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to address the abuse, one of the long-term problems that contributed to the nation’s fisheries industry being yellow-carded by the European Commission more than two-and-a-half years ago for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU).
“The decision to issue a yellow card to Taiwan is based on serious shortcomings in the fisheries legal framework, a system of sanctions that does not deter IUU fishing, and lack of effective monitoring, control and surveillance of the long-distance fleet,” the commission said on Oct. 1, 2015.
The government appeared to take the yellow card warning seriously, as it was the key impetus in the passage of the Act for Distant Water Fisheries (遠洋漁業條例) in July 2016, which took effect on Jan. 15 last year, as well as amendments to the Fisheries Act (漁業法) and the 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).
Those legislative measures were accompanied by reassurances from various Fisheries Agency and Council of Agriculture officials, at regular intervals, that they would be enough to convince the commission to lift the yellow card.
While the Act for Distant Water Fisheries did give migrant workers new protections, such as insurance, healthcare, regulated working hours and rest periods, and stronger rules governing labor brokers, it still relies on the industry to follow the rules and, even worse, still allows for an offshore hiring system — and therefore ruinous broker fees.
There is still no effective oversight mechanism to hold non-compliant brokers and employers accountable, and foreign fishermen are still not covered by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Not surprisingly, the commission was unimpressed. After visits to Taiwan in October last year and in March, commission officials said they decided to keep Taiwan on the warning list, because implementation of the new law was ineffective and the Fisheries Agency’s management was not transparent enough.
The agency’s reaction to that news was to urge Taiwan’s distant water fishing fleet to ensure their boats observed foreign laws.
That was pretty watery, but it was nothing compared with its response to Thursday’s protest, which was to remind migrant fishermen that they could file complaints about abuses by their captains or boat owners by calling one of two phone numbers: one if they were in Taiwan, another if they were outside the country.
Even for a landlubber, it is hard to believe that making a cellphone call thousands of kilometers away when not only your job, but your life, depends upon your captain, will be of much help — not to mention the language barrier faced by Southeast Asian fishermen trying to communicate with land-based Taiwanese bureaucrats.
As with so many other social, economic and industrial issues facing Taiwan, passing or amending laws is one thing; ensuring that changes are implemented and monitoring for continued compliance is a whole other issue.
It is no good to set out monitoring requirements or list fines and other punishments, but not have either the personnel or the political will to carry out oversight — or relying on telephone calls from far out to sea to find out there is a problem.
Remember, the key phrase in the commission’s 2015 statement was “lack of effective monitoring, control and surveillance of the long-distance fleet.”
If the government really wants Taiwan’s yellow card lifted, it should end the offshore hiring system and give the responsibility for the employment and welfare of migrant fishermen to the Ministry of Labor.
Help is far more than a telephone call away when one is at sea.
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