The Council of Labor Affairs’ (CLA) plan to offer a NT$5,000 reward for the capture of runaway migrant workers drew angry reactions from labor rights groups yesterday, who accused the council of ignoring the root of the problem.
“The Council of Labor Affairs has failed to resolve the crux of the matter, which is the heavy exploitation that many migrant workers are subjected to. Putting a reward on those who run away will not solve the problem,” Taiwan Labor Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said.
The council said on Tuesday that it was revamping its reward system to give informants NT$5,000 for each person they help catch, rather than for confirmed reports on runaways.
It also planned to raise the NT$2,000 reward for reporting illegal employers and unscrupulous brokerage firms by 10 to 25 times.
Son and the Taiwan International Worker’s Association said they doubted the council had actually looked at the problem of runaway workers from a broader perspective — by questioning how many foreign workers should be in Taiwan.
“What we want the government to do is examine the legitimacy and the practicality of the overall policy of importing workers into Taiwan,” Son said.
“Do we really need that many foreign workers?” he asked.
Unless the council has enough safeguards in place to ensure the safety of migrants’ working conditions, the government should think twice before opening the nation’s doors to them, he said.
The problem of illegal workers was highlighted after scaffolding collapsed near the Beishan Interchange (北山交流道) on Freeway No. 6 in Nantou County on Sept. 30, killing seven men, including six Indonesians who had continued to work illegally in Taiwan after their original contracts expired.
At a separate setting yesterday, Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) would not say if he supported raising the bounty on reporting illegal foreign workers. He did say the council would carefully evaluate the possibility of increasing the reward.
He also pledged to handle the issue of illegal foreign workers in a humanitarian way.
Wu said the government must locate all the undocumented foreign workers — estimated to be as many as 30,000 — to protect them from being exploited by employers, which he said could possibly cause more social problems.
Wu said he had told the council, the National Immigration Agency and the National Police Agency to come up with measures to locate the runaways.
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