Minister of Labor Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) yesterday said that Taipei and New Delhi are to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) before the end of this year allowing for Indian migrant workers to come to Taiwan.
The Ministry of Labor is still in talks with India on when the agreement would be signed, Hsu said on the sidelines of an event in Taipei for participants of the upcoming WorldSkills Asia Competition.
Her remarks came after a source last week said that the two sides had almost completed initial discussions on the MOU and that the signing was scheduled for the end of the year to help address a labor shortage.
Photo: Lee Ching-hui, Taipei Times
The source, who declined to be named, also said that Taiwan and India had been negotiating the agreement since 2020, but that talks had been stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some reports have said that Taiwan could open its doors to as many as 100,000 migrant workers from India, but Hsu said the number was still being considered as it depended on the needs of industries and the qualifications of the workers.
After the MOU is signed, working-level meetings would be held to iron out the details, she said, indicating that once they are finalized, there would be an official announcement on the deal.
At a news conference on Thursday, Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Arindam Bagchi said that he hoped the migrant worker MOU would be signed as soon as possible, as the pact is expected to benefit both parties.
“Negotiations by their very nature tend to not have a finite timeline,” Bagchi said. “But we hope that they will be concluded in due course and that it will soon be possible to benefit from this mobility partnership.”
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