The government has formulated plans to open up the hospitality sector, particularly housekeeping and cleaning jobs, to migrant workers, but concrete details still need to be worked out, Minister of Transportation and Communications Wang Kwo-tsai (王國材) said yesterday.
Before a question-and-answer session at the legislature in Taipei, the minister told reporters that certain details of the plan — for example, the exact number of workers to be allowed — required further discussion with the Ministry of Labor, but that an initial plan has been formulated.
Wang said that a meeting between the ministries would be held this week to further discuss the plan.
Photo: Chen Hsin-yu, Taipei Times
Earlier this year, in a bid to tackle the labor shortage in the hospitality sector, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications decided to subsidize employers who hire additional service staff or cleaners with a monthly salary that meets a certain level, but it has done little to solve the problem.
Asked why the subsidies were not attracting more people to work in the hospitality sector, Wang said that most people consider cleaning jobs tough and unappealing and that opening up the sector to foreign workers might help alleviate the problem.
In response to Wang’s statement, Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Chou Ting-chang (周廷彰) told reporters that the plan was still under discussion, but more advice and meetings were needed.
Chou said that the hospitality sector is estimated to be short of about 8,000 workers, including 5,500 cleaners.
He added that the Tourism Administration and several government agencies had launched a joint program earlier this year to recruit hotel workers and that so far it had attracted 2,350 workers.
Chou said the government has also loosened restrictions for foreign students, so that more people, including foreign students and those enrolled in industry-academia programs, can work in hotels.
The staffing issues in the hospitality sector have mainly been caused by a shortage of hotel cleaners as older employees are physically unable to do the work and younger employees are not willing to do so, the Tourism Administration said.
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