Services in Vietnamese and Indonesian have been added to the free Taoyuan citizen hotline to help migrant workers and other native speakers of the languages living in the city access government services.
Taoyuan Research and Evaluation Commission chief Wu Chao-ming (吳肇銘) yesterday said that migrant workers from Vietnam and Indonesia often have trouble obtaining basic information about public services due to language barriers.
The city added hotline services in the two languages so that people from those countries could more easily access information on topics such as welfare, their rights, education, job training and naturalization, Wu said.
The commission would keep a record of the number of calls received each month in the two languages and the conversations held to learn more about the needs of the two communities, he said, while pledging to add services in other languages.
Taoyuan is home to about 57,000 Vietnamese and 34,000 Indonesians, many of whom are migrant workers, the commission said
Hou Chao-feng (侯兆豐), who heads the commission’s citizens’ service team, said that people can call 1999 from a mobile or landline phone free of charge for up to 10 minutes.
Callers are notified of the 10-minute free period and the telephone number of the person answering the call, Hou said.
The call is cut off when time expires, but people can call again, using the telephone number of the person they previously spoke to if they want to continue the conversation, he said.
There is no limit on how many phone calls an individual can make, Hou added.
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