The Ministry of Labor yesterday opened a new round of applications for public welfare organizations to join a pilot program that trains and dispatches part-time migrant caregivers, with the goal of extending the service to all 22 cities and counties across Taiwan.
Applications for the program's third phase would be accepted through Sept. 24, after receiving repeated requests from people living in areas where the service is not yet available, the ministry said.
Photo: Taipei Times
The "Diversified Companion Care Service Pilot Program," commonly known as the "hourly migrant worker" program, allows eligible people with temporary or short-term caregiving needs to hire migrant caregivers through nonprofit organizations on a self-pay basis as an alternative to employing live-in foreign caregivers.
Launched on April 27 last year to help address growing demand for caregivers, the program currently authorizes 13 public welfare organizations to recruit, train and dispatch non-live-in migrant caregivers to multiple households in a single day.
The service is available in 16 cities and counties, covering more than 70 percent of Taiwan's local jurisdictions.
The ministry hopes more organizations would join the program so services could be expanded to all 22 cities and counties across Taiwan, with new providers expected to begin operating as early as the start of next year, said Hu Hsin-yeh (胡欣野), deputy head of the Workforce Development Agency's Cross-Border Workforce Management Division.
Under the program, eligible applicants could hire migrant caregivers for self-funded care ranging from four to 24 hours per assignment, with workers required to receive a mandatory 10-hour rest break between shifts.
Eligible users include people with disabilities, those with major illnesses or injuries, those who have been hospitalized or undergone surgery within the previous three months, those who qualify to hire a live-in foreign caregiver and people assessed as requiring Level 2 to Level 8 long-term care.
Services include assistance with daily living activities, accompaniment on outings or medical visits, and supervision to ensure the care recipient's safety.
According to ministry statistics, the program had provided more than 100,000 hours of care to more than 10,000 people as of the end of July.
The ministry said one-time use and appointments made once every one to two weeks accounted for the largest share of service requests, suggesting the program is helping fill gaps in Taiwan's long-term care system.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
A Straits Exchange Foundation official today warned that yielding to political pressure in exchange for access to China’s entertainment industry rarely ends well, amid rumors that China is seeking to lure Taiwanese K-pop star Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜). Chou, more commonly known as Tzuyu, is the only Taiwanese member of the girl group Twice. Her contract with JYP Entertainment is set to expire at the end of this year, and there have been widespread reports that she would not renew it. She is reportedly planning to pursue solo activities under her parents’ agency, Yu Hai Entertainment (瑜海娛樂), although China has also reportedly offered
A tropical depression near Hainan that was once Typhoon Saudel may once again strengthen into a tropical storm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, but a sea warning for waters around Taiwan is unlikely. CWA forecaster Huang En-hung (黃恩鴻) said that Saudel would return to being a weak tropical storm by late yesterday or early this morning. However, as the storm is to gradually weaken again and would head toward China’s Guangdong Province away from Taiwan, the chances that it would affect Taiwan enough for the CWA to issue a sea warning are relatively low,
RSS