The Ministry of Labor has agreed to a proposal by the Council of Agriculture to increase the number of agricultural migrant workers from 6,000 to 12,000.
Paul Su (蘇裕國), head of the Workforce Development Agency’s Cross-Border Workforce Management Division, yesterday said that the agencies reached a consensus on the issue at a meeting last month, without specifying when the changes would take effect.
The new hires are expected to come primarily from Vietnam and Indonesia.
Photo: Chen Wen-chan, Taipei Times
According to council data, 5.3 percent of farms in Taiwan reported shortages of seasonal workers in 2021, while 1.2 percent reported shortages of full-time workers.
COVID-19-related border controls likely contributed to the shortages by making it harder to bring in foreign workers, Su said, adding that in 2020, about 6,000 migrant workers who had illegally left their original employment were found working on farms.
While the easing of COVID-19 restrictions has helped mitigate this problem, the council has sought to expand the agricultural migrant worker program to ensure that farms have sufficient access to labor, Su said.
The agencies at the meeting also agreed to revise a rule that requires farms to employ two Taiwanese workers for every migrant worker they want to hire, replacing it with a 1:1 local to migrant worker ratio.
The council has argued that the current policy places an undue burden on small, family-operated farms, in which family members frequently split their time between farm work and part-time jobs.
The labor ministry also agreed to a proposal to allow migrant workers to be hired for work in floriculture, seeding enterprises, facility cultivation agriculture and forestry, as well as orchards and farms growing grain crops and specialty crops.
Labor ministry official Chuang Kuo-liang (莊國良) told reporters that the changes need to go through bureaucratic procedures, but could take effect in the first half of this year.
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