President Chen Shui-bian (
Chen said that one of the country's most urgent tasks is to ameliorate its human-rights protection and that while it must self-reflect on what it has yet to achieve in this regard, the efforts made to improve foreign workers' rights should not be forgotten.
He gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the International Society for Labor and Social Security Law's eighth conference in Asia.
Chen said that the government's work to improve working conditions for foreign laborers, such as implementing labor and health insurance are concrete examples of assuring their rights.
He said that the government is willing to be aligned with other relevant international organizations as well as to engage in talks with other Asian countries on foreign labor issues, so that Taiwan will be safer for such workers.
Chen quoted the UN Commission on Sustainable Development's charter, which says that without social justice, there can be no long-lasting peace. He said he expects that Taiwan will in the future become part of the international community and hopes to increase cooperation with it while pursuing democracy in politics and economic freedom.
He said that although Taiwan is not a member of any international labor organization, it still passed the Gender Equality in Employment Law (兩性工作平等法) in 2002. It integrated the spirit and the content of the International Labor Conventions, Chen said.
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A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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