Taiwan is to bring in 1,000 Indian workers amid a labor shortage in the manufacturing sector, as part of an agreement signed between the two countries earlier this year, Workforce Development Agency Director-General Tsai Meng-liang (蔡孟良) said yesterday.
The decision to bring 1,000 Indian workers to Taiwan was made by Taiwanese and Indian officials handling labor affairs during a working-level meeting in Taipei on Tuesday, Tsai told a news conference.
It would be the first batch of Indian workers brought to Taiwan under the memorandum of understanding inked between the two governments in February.
Photo: CNA
However, Tsai said there is no fixed timeline as to when Indian workers would start coming to Taiwan.
Minister of Labor Ho Pei-shan (何佩珊) said in an interview in July that the Ministry of Labor was aiming to make that happen in the middle of next year.
Tsai appeared to be less certain about the date, stressing that more issues — including procedures for recruiting and bringing in workers — remain to be discussed and finalized between the two sides.
“We of course hope for [the arrival of Indian workers] to take place as soon as possible, but some basic groundwork still needs to be done,” he said, adding that it took Japan about a year after it signed a similar deal with India.
According to the ministry, a five-member delegation led by Surinder Bhagat, joint secretary for overseas employment of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, traveled to Taiwan on Monday and stayed until yesterday to discuss related matters and learn about the work environment in Taiwan.
The two sides also agreed at the meeting that of the 1,000 workers to be brought into Taiwan, 5 percent — or 50 workers — would be hired directly, with the rest recruited through labor brokerages verified by both sides, Tsai said.
Asked about qualifications required of Indian workers, Tsai said no specifics beyond existing Taiwanese regulations on migrant workers had been finalized, but proficiency in the English language is preferred.
He also rejected concerns from some about the potential risks posed by Indian workers to Taiwanese society as “discrimination,” noting that the crime rate in India is not higher than that of many developed countries.
Moreover, the crime rate among migrant workers in Taiwan is less than half that of Taiwanese, he added.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS