Two weeks after the government opened the foreign labor market to Vietnam, a group of 34 Vietnamese women flew in to Taiwan yesterday.
The women will work at a Canon camera factory in the Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park, according to Chu Cong Phung (
Chu and Tran Van Hang (3?憳?, director of the Overseas Labor Bureau under Vietnam's Labor Department, participated in a promotional event for Vietnamese workers yesterday. The event attracted 13 Vietnamese manpower agents and 250 Taiwanese agents.
"We have high hope in Taiwan's labor market," Chu said..
The 34 Vietnamese women arrived in Taipei yesterday afternoon, dressed in white uniforms provided by their agent. They said they were happy to have a chance to work in Taiwan.
According to Taiwan's law, the workers will be given at least NT$15,840 per month, the minimum wage.
"This will be of great help to improving the living standards of our people and will supplement our foreign exchange earnings," Chu said.
According to Chu, laborers are paid about US$100 per month in Vietnam, although some Vietnamese workers said wages are even lower. Tran Bich Thuy (3笑??, a staffer from Hanoi International Labor Service Company, said urban workers earn around US$50 per month, while rural laborers earn only US$10 to US$20. In other words, a Vietnamese can earn 10 to 20 times more in Taiwan than he can in Vietnam, she said.
According to the labor agreement between Taipei and Hanoi, employers could adopt a direct-hiring system with the Vietnamese government or they could hire workers through Taiwanese agents. An agent fee of NT$30,000 and a monthly service fee of NT$1,000 will be charged each worker.
But this is still too much of a burden for a Vietnamese worker who only makes NT$1,000 in Vietnam on average every month, according to Tran. Therefore, she said, they are unable to pay agent fees in advance. Instead, they pay in installments after they start getting paid in Taiwan, she said.
Since all the Vietnamese manpower agents are state-run firms, 12 percent of workers' monthly salaries in Taiwan will go to the government, she said.
"We have adopted the direct-hiring system with all other labor import countries. Taiwan is the only exception. Our workers are not used to the system in which they have to pay extra fees to local agents," she said.
In a lecture, Tran Van Hang, Vietnam's overseas labor director, said Vietnam has been a member of the international labor market since the 1980s.
Vietnamese laborers have worked in the former Soviet Union, East Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea. There have been 400,000 Vietnamese working overseas since that time.
"Our overseas laborers have been taking jobs mainly in the manufacturing, textile and fishery industries," Tran said.
In promoting Vietnamese laborers, he said Vietnamese have been awarded first place prizes in recent nursing competitions in Europe.
"They have also won second place in this year's workers' competition in Japan," he added.
According to Tran, Vietnamese laborers will initially work in the manufacturing industries. Among the 15 Vietnamese agents authorized by its government, only three of them manage domestic helpers.
Although Taiwan has a bigger need for domestic helpers than for manufacturing workers, Vietnam is very careful about exporting its workers, according to Steve Kwan (
"It's because there have been incidents of sexual abuse towards Vietnamese domestic workers in the Middle East," Kwan said.
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