The number of migrant workers in Taiwan reached 706,060 in April, with more than 90 percent of them from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) data showed on Saturday.
More than 271,000, or 38.4 percent of migrant workers, were from Indonesia followed by Vietnamese (221,000, 31.4 percent) and Filipinos (154,000, 21.8 percent), the data showed.
Total migrant workers exceeded 700,000 for the first time in October last year, when there were 703,162.
Photo: Wang Han-ping, Taipei Times
The data showed that 259,144, or 36.7 percent, worked in domestic care and services, while 446,916, or 63.3 percent, worked in manufacturing, construction, agriculture and other roles.
Most migrant workers in the manufacturing, agricultural and construction sectors were in Taoyuan — more than 91,000 — while Taichung had 78,000 and New Taipei City 56,000, the data showed.
Taipei had the highest number working as carers or doing similar work with 44,000, while New Taipei City had 43,000.
Migrant workers reported as missing or working at jobs other than what they were legally contracted to do totaled 51,982, or 7.4 percent, National Immigration Agency data showed.
In related news, police in Taichung yesterday detained 10 people at the ASEAN Square shopping mall in Central District (中區) near the Taichung Railway Station.
Seven Thais — five men and two women — one Indonesian woman and two Vietnamese men were questioned about their employment and visa status, police said.
Control Yuan members last year said that officials from the Ministry of Labor, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Health and Welfare should be held accountable for a lack of long-term planning and negligent supervision amid a surge in hiring of foreign workers without proper documentation.
“Reports of missing migrant workers have increased each year, creating public security concerns,” the Control Yuan said in a report.
“The percentage of migrant workers convicted of criminal activity has also risen, especially for assault, endangering public safety, narcotics activities, illegal logging and poaching,” the report said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS