Yilan County prosecutors on Friday charged a Taiwanese labor broker and two others with human trafficking for allegedly providing migrant fishers with forged documents and forcing them to work long hours with little pay.
A labor broker surnamed Huang (黃) allegedly used forged employment applications to contract 15 migrant workers since 2017, sending them to work in the local fishing industry, the Yilan District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement.
In 2018, after allegedly reporting one of the workers as missing, Huang sent the person to work at a New Taipei City seafood distributor run by a man surnamed Chang (張) and a woman surnamed Tsai (蔡), who forced the person to work more than 10 hours per day without days off or overtime pay, prosecutors said.
Last year, Huang allegedly introduced another migrant worker to work for the couple aboard a fishing boat, prosecutors said.
When the man allegedly lost a finger in an incident aboard the vessel, the couple sent him to work at their distribution company, again with long hours and little compensation, threatening him that he would face consequences if he reported the conditions to the Ministry of Labor, the prosecutors’ office said.
All three suspects have been charged under the Human Trafficking Prevention Act (人口販運防制法), while Huang was additionally charged with forgery and breaches of the Employment Service Act (就業服務法).
Taiwan employs about 700,000 migrant workers, mostly Southeast Asians, in a wide range of industries, including construction and manufacturing, as well as in homes as domestic care providers.
Many are not protected under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Rights groups say that many migrant workers also owe significant debt to brokers in their country of origin and in Taiwan, which forces them into illegal work or to endure abusive treatment, for fear they would lose their job and be unable to repay the debt.
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