The Control Yuan has censured the Ministry of Justice’s Agency of Corrections over its prison work programs that pay inmates as little as NT$20 per month, saying that some prisoners who have no outside means of support could not earn enough to buy underwear.
An investigation by Control Yuan members Wang Mei-yu (王美玉), Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) and Kao Yung-cheng (高涌誠) reviewed the work performed by more than 35,000 inmates at 45 prisons nationwide.
By law, all prisoners are required to work, unless there are special circumstances such as illness, but the majority of the work should be for government projects.
However, the investigation found that 58.4 percent of work performed in prisons was for private companies, including hand-processing jobs such as making paper bags or origami lotus flowers, the Control Yuan said in a statement on Monday.
Thirty-two of the prisons are paying their inmates less than NT500 per month on average, while eight pay less than NT$200 a month, it said.
Tainan Prison in 2017 earned NT$1,180 per inmate from work done by its inmates, or NT$98 per month, and the amount inmates could earn depended on their grade level, with a grade-four prisoner receiving an average of 20 percent of the income, for a total of NT$234 per year, or NT$19.6 per month, it said.
Agency of Corrections statistics show that at least 20 percent of the nation’s 60,000-plus prisoners are unable to afford their basic living expenses, estimated to be NT$3,000 per month, the statement said.
Half of the prisoners are from middle or low-income families and nearly 13 percent of them have no family or friends they can rely on for financial support, the Control Yuan said.
Under the Constitution, the Council of Grand Justices’ Constitutional Interpretation No. 756 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, prisoners have the same constitutional rights as other citizens, except for restricted freedom of movement, it said.
The Agency of Corrections has contravened the law by preventing prisoners from earning enough money to meet their basic needs, which is inhumane, it said.
The agency must correct the situation, and the Executive Yuan should also take steps to address the increased poverty among prisoners, the Control Yuan said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS