Only about half of foreign crew on Taiwanese fishing boats are covered by the nation’s mandatory labor insurance program, a gap that will take a while to close, a Bureau of Labor Insurance official said last week
Huang Chin-yi (黃錦儀), division head at the Ministry of Labor’s bureau, said that labor laws stipulate that migrant fishers have to be enrolled in the labor insurance program by the time they start their first day of work.
Labor insurance offers coverage for occupational injuries and can also provide retirement benefits should a person work in Taiwan for long enough, Huang said.
Yet out of the 12,097 migrant fishers in Taiwan — 9,074 Indonesians, 1,613 Filipinos, 1,379 Vietnamese and 31 Thais — only about 6,000 are covered by labor insurance, government statistics at the end of May showed.
The bureau might become a little more forceful when it holds information sessions at seaports nationwide in the second half of the year to inform employers that they must enroll their migrant employees.
“We will inform the employers that they need to enroll their migrant fishers in the labor insurance program, and if they still refuse then we will fine them,” Huang said.
Fines would be four times the amount that should have been paid, she said.
The high percentage of uninsured migrant fishers stems largely from their lack of familiarity with labor rights and reliance on their employers for their welfare, said Father Gioan Tran Van Thiet, an assistant parish priest at St Christopher’s Church in Taipei.
Thiet, who visits migrant fishers in Yilan County every week, said in some cases employers focus on profits and their catch, and leave administrative duties to the labor brokers, he said, adding that the labor insurance requirement often falls through the cracks.
“There are also times when an employer actually knows that they need to apply for labor insurance for their migrant fishermen, but they just do not want to do so,” Thiet said.
Sometimes employers do not want to pay the premiums, and some migrant fishers do not feel they are in danger and also prefer not to pay for insurance, some observers have said.
The Labor Insurance Act (勞工保險條例) requires employers to pay 70 percent of the insurance premium, while workers pay 20 percent and the government 10 percent.
Whether the government will follow through on efforts to persuade employers to change their ways will determine if more migrant fishers become insured.
Information sessions have been scheduled for Yilan’s Toucheng Township (頭城) on Aug. 12, and in Penghu on Sept. 11, and more events are being planned for Pingtung County and New Taipei City in October and November, Huang said.
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