The Control Yuan on Friday called for legal amendments to facilitate the hiring of migrant workers in agriculture, citing a lack of farm workers in the nation.
Farmers are legally permitted to hire migrant workers to help with farm work, but poor policy planning and insufficient support measures make doing so prohibitively difficult, Control Yuan members Wang Mei-yu (王美玉), Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲) and Hung Yi-chang (鴻義章) said.
“Farmers are getting older and younger people in their communities have mostly migrated to urban areas for work,” the members said, adding that the situation often leaves farmers with no option but to hire illegal workers.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
The average area of a farm in Taiwan is 0.72 hectares, which is difficult for older farmers to manage on their own without farmhands, the members said.
In 2020, 548,000 people in the nation were engaged in agricultural work, half of whom were people aged 65 or over and 30 percent of whom were over 70, the members said, citing government statistics.
A 2019 survey of farmers found that the nation was short by about 100,000 farm workers.
Farmers at the time expressed concern that the shortage could affect harvests in the short term and overall agricultural development in the long term.
“The survey found that the worker shortage has existed for a long time,” the Control Yuan members said.
“Although the Council of Agriculture [COA] strives to bring in immigrant workers, it has not taken stock of the actual labor needs,” they said.
Citing an example of the challenges farmers face in hiring workers, the members said that from January to October last year, 271 organizations representing migrant workers applied for farm work for a combined 4,680 workers, but only 1,218 applications were approved by the COA.
Farmers are allowed to hire only one migrant worker for every four Taiwanese they employ, or two migrant workers for every six Taiwanese, the members said.
“However, the survey showed that many farmers post vacancies all year without any Taiwanese applicants, meaning they also cannot hire migrants,” the members said.
The COA has adjusted the local hiring requirement for certain seasons, but the adjustment is based on the number of Taiwanese farmhands registered with the COA in each county and municipality, and still falls far short of labor needs in the counties with the highest demand, they said.
For example, Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃) has dozens of farms, but has only been allocated 40 migrant workers to be hired as farmhands, the members said.
The situation is also dangerous for migrant workers, as those who cannot find legal work often turn to illegal labor, which means they have no access to childcare, healthcare or legal protection of their labor rights, they said.
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to