Social workers specializing in child protection are being seriously exploited, lawmakers and social groups said yesterday.
Social workers involved in protecting children from abuse face heavy workloads and long working hours and cannot protect themselves from danger, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Many social workers are hired as part-time or temporary workers and earn minimal pay, while those employed by the government are asked by local authorities to perform tasks unrelated to their main job, said Wang, a former CEO of the Child Welfare League Foundation.
Wang released a ranking showing the 10 counties and cities in Taiwan with the lowest ratio of children to social workers who are working on child abuse cases. Hualien County topped the list, with only one social worker per 256 cases, followed by Taitung and Yilan counties.
Eva Teng (滕西華), president of the Taipei Association of Licensed Social Workers, accused local authorities of late payment to social workers, saying one-third of the counties and cities listed still owed wages, adding that she was angry that social workers are hired as part-time or temporary workers.
“Can social welfare and sexual assault prevention work be handed to part-time workers?” she asked.
Wang also urged the ministry to hand the management of social workers to the central government, rather than local governments, and asked the Council of Labor Affairs to bolster inspections of social workers’ employment conditions.
In response, Chen Su-chun (陳素春), deputy director of the ministry’s Department of Social Affairs, said her department would strive to provide the information.
Child Welfare Bureau Director-General Chang Hsiu-yuan (張秀鴛) said her agency would increase the number of social workers each year and would make hiring social workers involved in protecting children its first priority.
The coast guard on Friday took a Chinese fishing boat and the 17 people on board into custody, after it rammed into a patrol boat while attempting to flee. A 100-tonne coast guard vessel at about 8am discovered a Chinese fishing boat illegally operating in waters about 11 nautical miles (20.4km) northwest of Hsinchu, the Hsinchu offshore flotilla of the Coast Guard Administration said. The crew refused to allow law enforcement to board the ship and attempted to flee, it added. The coast guard vessel and another ship chased the fishing boat for about a half hour, during which time the Chinese boat
Vice President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that Beijing was trying to “annex” Taiwan, while China said its recent series of drills near Taiwan are aimed at combating the “arrogance” of separatist forces. The Ministry of National Defense earlier this month said that it had observed dozens of Chinese fighters, drones, bombers and other aircraft, as well as warships and the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, operating nearby. The increased frequency of China’s military activities has raised the risk of events “getting out of hand” and sparking an accidental clash, Minister of National Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng (邱國正) said last week. Asked about the spurt
China’s Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong has asked foreign consulates in Hong Kong to submit details of their local staff, which is more proof that the “one country, two systems” model no longer exists, a Taiwanese academic said. The office sent letters dated Monday last week to consulates in the territory, giving them one month to submit the information it requires. The move followed Beijing’s attempt to obtain floor plans for all properties used by foreign missions in Hong Kong last year, which raised concerns among diplomats that the information could be used for
‘ABNORMITY’: News of the military exercises on the coast of the Chinese province facing Taiwan were made public by the Ministry of National Defense on Thursday Taiwan’s military yesterday said it has detected the Chinese military initiating a round of exercises at a bay area in coastal Fujian Province, which faces Taiwan, since early yesterday morning and it has been closely monitoring the drills. The exercises being conducted at Fujian’s Dacheng Bay featured an undisclosed number of People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) warplanes, warships and ground troops, the Ministry of National Defense said in a press statement. The ministry did not disclose what kind of military exercises are being conducted there and for how long they would be happening, but it did say that it has been closely watching
RSS