Almost 11 months after the government celebrated the European Commission removing Taiwan from its illegal fishery watch list, several sobering reminders this week highlight how much more needs to be done to improve the fisheries industry.
On June 27 last year, the commission lifted its “yellow card” against Taiwan, a crucial decision given that Taiwan’s long-distance fleet is the second-largest in the world and being sanctioned by the commission would have hurt the nation’s ability to market its fisheries products abroad.
While a major focus of the government’s reforms to get the yellow card lifted were aimed at ensuring the legitimacy and traceability of the fleet’s catches, there was also an effort to improve the working conditions and protect the rights of those employed on Taiwanese boats, with the Act For Distant Water Fisheries (遠洋漁業條例) being passed in 2016.
The act, which took effect on Jan. 15, 2017, was aimed at ending the abuse of the more than 20,000 migrant fishers working for the deep-sea fleet, too many of whom have labored under conditions that can only be called modern-day slavery.
Yet, in the past seven days there has been a damaging report from the Indonesian National Board for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers (BP2MI), a mealymouthed response from Fisheries Agency Deputy Director-General Lin Kuo-ping (林國平) and strong criticism from the Control Yuan of the agency and the Ministry of Labor over their treatment of migrant fishers.
BP2MI head Benny Rhamdani on Saturday last week said that nearly one-third of the complaints his agency has received from Indonesian fishers have come from those employed on Taiwanese ships.
Of the 389 complaints received from 2018 to Wednesday last week, 120 had come from men working on Taiwanese ships, followed by South Korea (42), Peru (30), China (23) and South Africa (16), he said, adding that the vast majority (164) were about unpaid wages, followed by deaths (47) and injuries (46).
Lin said that most of the complaints his agency received were about underpaid wages and that if the complaints are valid, it fines the employer and tells them to pay their workers, but it cannot do anything about salaries withheld by labor brokers in fishers’ home nations, because that does not concern Taiwanese employers or brokers.
The agency only handles complaints from fishers on the long-distance fleet, while those from people employed by the inshore fleet are under the jurisdiction of the ministry, he added.
On Wednesday, the Control Yuan said that the agency and the ministry must conduct more frequent inspections to push employers to improve the living and working conditions of migrant fishers.
It also told the ministry that it must ensure that the owners of Taiwan-registered vessels enroll their migrant workers in the labor insurance system, as required by law.
The passing of the buck between the agency and the ministry has long been criticized by labor rights advocates, who have said that the tangled net of oversight responsibilities between the two creates confusion and allows boat owners and captains to ignore the law.
The agency has for too long been more concerned about the effects of laws and regulations on the owners and operators of boats than the fishers who do the actual work. Its focus on paperwork and home port inspections instead of at sea and foreign ports has allowed the abuse of migrant fishers to continue.
The Control Yuan’s action on labor insurance is good news for the nearly 10,000 migrant fishers working on the inshore fleet, but it leaves those on the deep-sea fleet unprotected. The government and the Legislative Yuan clearly have much work left to improve the lot of migrant fishers and salvage the reputation of Taiwan’s deep-sea fleet.
There is much evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is sending soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and is learning lessons for a future war against Taiwan. Until now, the CCP has claimed that they have not sent PLA personnel to support Russian aggression. On 18 April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskiy announced that the CCP is supplying war supplies such as gunpowder, artillery, and weapons subcomponents to Russia. When Zelinskiy announced on 9 April that the Ukrainian Army had captured two Chinese nationals fighting with Russians on the front line with details
On a quiet lane in Taipei’s central Daan District (大安), an otherwise unremarkable high-rise is marked by a police guard and a tawdry A4 printout from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicating an “embassy area.” Keen observers would see the emblem of the Holy See, one of Taiwan’s 12 so-called “diplomatic allies.” Unlike Taipei’s other embassies and quasi-consulates, no national flag flies there, nor is there a plaque indicating what country’s embassy this is. Visitors hoping to sign a condolence book for the late Pope Francis would instead have to visit the Italian Trade Office, adjacent to Taipei 101. The death of
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), joined by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), held a protest on Saturday on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei. They were essentially standing for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is anxious about the mass recall campaign against KMT legislators. President William Lai (賴清德) said that if the opposition parties truly wanted to fight dictatorship, they should do so in Tiananmen Square — and at the very least, refrain from groveling to Chinese officials during their visits to China, alluding to meetings between KMT members and Chinese authorities. Now that China has been defined as a foreign hostile force,
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to