Taiwan and Indonesia reached consensus on a variety of issues at a recent labor affairs conference, including an agreement to allow direct hiring of Indonesian workers in applicable industries, a Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) official said on Thursday.
The consensus would allow Indonesia to join other foreign labor source countries that have agreed to apply the direct hiring system to better protect their overseas workers’ rights, the official said.
Taiwan’s government set up the Direct Hiring Service Center last December to help local people find foreign caretakers. The center’s main objective is to streamline the process of hiring foreign caregivers and protect foreign workers from exploitation by employment agencies.
The measure allows foreign workers to find jobs without having to go through labor brokers either in their own countries or in Taiwan.
For Indonesian workers, the measure is currently only applicable for caregivers, who account for 90 percent of the 120,000 Indonesian workers in Taiwan, the official said.
The consensus reached on Wednesday would benefit the remaining 10 percent of Indonesian workers in the manufacturing and construction industries, the official said.
The two sides also agreed to shorten the application time and simplify the process of direct hiring services, the official said.
In addition to the direct hiring measure, the two countries also agreed on exchanges of information on training of family caregivers in the hopes of improving the standards of Indonesian caregivers, with the exchanges to be carried out within one month.
Indonesia also promised to regulate its employment agencies, which have a high rate of absconding workers, and would establish a mechanism within one month to cover Taiwan’s expenses in finding, detaining and deporting Indonesian workers who abscond, the official said.
The conference, held in Taipei on Wednesday, was attended by officials from both sides and presided over by CLA Chairwoman Jennifer Wang (王如玄) and Mohammed Jumhur Hidayat, director-general of Indonesia’s National Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Overseas Workers.
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