A Control Yuan investigation last week panned the Cabinet and two ministries for lack of planning and co-ordination in upholding the welfare of foreign spouses.
The six-member team, led by Lee Shen-yi (
But the Cabinet was singled out for particular criticism, with the report saying it shouldered most of the responsibility for the ministries' inability to provide the assistance the government had promised to the spouses.
The report followed two years of investigations by Control Yuan investigators.
"The Executive Yuan was tardy in discovering, so late in the day, the importance of preparing policies to protect the well-being of these immigrants," Lee said.
"The government did not instruct the MOI, the primary administrative organ in this case, to deal with [the matter] until 2003," he said.
"The administration fell short of its promise to introduce measures to safeguard these immigrants' well-being, as evidenced by a lack of meaningful demographic data [on the immigrants]," he said.
In the last five years, the number of non-Taiwanese married to locals has increased tenfold, the Control Yuan report said.
The report said that as of August last year, the country had 287,059 non-Taiwanese spouses, consisting of 103,281 spouses from countries other than China and 183,778 spouses from China. 92.14 percent of foreign spouses were female.
Figures also showed that 14 percent of Taiwanese men who married last year had foreign brides. The majority of these were from China, with Vietnamese women ranked second.
The investigation also found that one out of every eight people born in Taiwan last year had a non-Taiwanese mother.
Most of the spouses from China and Southeast Asian countries were reported to have still been in their teens when they married, and that marriage brokers had a significant role to play in the process.
POOR EDUCATION
The report also showed that a significant number of foreign spouses had received very little education.
The MOE found that 97 percent of Vietnamese women who married local men between January and August last year had not attended junior high school in their home countries, while 42.9 percent of women from China only finished elementary school.
Control Yuan members therefore expressed concern at the ab-ility of non-Taiwanese mothers to adequately monitor their children's education.
The report also said that the MOI should have instructed county- and city-level governments to operate supplementary courses for spouses. Their failure to monitor the situation, however, contributed to a situation in which 12 county or city governments offered no such resources for immigrant spouses, it said.
The 12 governments included Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Yunlin and Tainan counties, where the majority of non-Taiwanese spouses reside, it said.
The MOE received similar criticism in the report.
Education officials had not made enough effort to integrate teaching materials, nor had they developed any training programs for teachers responsible for supplementary classes, the report said.
Both language difficulties and culture shock posed a real problem for spouses, the report noted, adding that a proportion of spouses had also been victims of domestic violence.
The interior ministry was criticized on this issue, with investigators accusing it of not doing its best to prevent women from being subject to violent acts.
"There are bound to be many hidden cases of domestic violence among the non-Taiwanese spouses, because they don't know how to make a report to the police, or else fear that the disclosure would lead to divorce and forced repatriation," the report said.
"Although a domestic violence hotline for immigrant spouses was in operation, the service was limited to office hours. Yet domestic violence can happen at any time," the report said.
The limited hotline service was also described by Wu Wei-ting (
Wu said the service offered callers a choice of five languages -- English, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai and Khmer.
But these languages were rotated during office hours, meaning that those wishing to use the service only had two hours each day to seek help, she said.
Taiwanese society still offered foreign brides a degree of hostility, Wu said.
"Educating the community to treat and think of non-Taiwanese spouses with more care is the key to making a friendlier environment for them," she said.
Chao, a co-author of the Control Yuan report, offered a similar assessment, cautioning that the government should not treat non-Taiwanese spouses with less respect simply because of their generally low level of education.
"This should not translate into an attitude in which they are labeled as second-class citizens. The government must be aware of this when providing educational counseling to immigrant spouses or when formalizing the protection of their labor rights," Chao said.
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