The Miaoli County Government had no authorization to impose a lockdown on foreign migrant workers in June last year, the Control Yuan said yesterday.
Control Yuan members Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) and Wang Mei-yu (王美玉) said that county government officials should receive reprimands and other punishments.
The members wrote in a report on the case that there was also misconduct and negligence at the Ministry of Labor and the National Immigration Agency.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
Miaoli County Commissioner Hsu Yao-chang (徐耀昌) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on June 7 last year imposed a lockdown affecting migrant workers and foreign care workers in the county, most of whom are from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand or the Philippines.
The county at the time was facing an outbreak of COVID-19 among migrant workers at factories at Jhunan Science Park (竹南科學園區), including clusters linked to King Yuan Electronics Co and Greatek Electronics Inc.
Foreign workers living in dormitories were ordered to remain in their rooms when not at work, while the companies were told to provide buses to take them to and from work, and to assign people to buy supplies for dormitory residents, Chinese-language media reported at the time.
Labor rights advocates said that the policies were discriminatory, as the orders applied only to migrant workers and not to Taiwanese.
Hsu also ordered Miaoli County police and labor agencies to enhance street patrols to check apparent foreigners seen outside and fine them if they were found to be in breach of the rules of the lockdown, which ended on June 28 last year.
Wang Yu-ling said they began the investigation in August last year.
“The lockdown order by the Miaoli County Government was without legal basis,” she said. “It had no authority to impose such a ban against foreign workers.”
“It contravened the rights of the workers and was discriminatory,” she added.
The policy, which maligned migrant workers, received a lot of attention from foreign media, she said.
“Reports about the Miaoli County Government’s treatment of migrant workers were listed in Amnesty International’s annual human rights report, while the US Department of State and international media reports have criticized the treatment of migrant workers in Taiwan, tarnishing the nation’s image,” she said.
Wang Mei-yu said that the county government and the ministry contravened the rights migrant workers have to health and information.
The lockdowns subjected them to overcrowded conditions and a lack of adequate bathing facilities, she said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS