Allegations of mistreatment and abuse of migrant workers surfaced again yesterday, with a Vietnamese woman saying she was paid less than NT$2,500 (US$75) a month while a social worker said two Filipino laborers recently died of overwork.
Two migrant workers yesterday related their sad experience working in the country in a press conference held by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Joanna Lei (
"I have been sold [by brokers] to six different employers since coming to Taiwan and my identification card has been confiscated," said "A-ming," an alias used by a caretaker from Vietnam.
Weeping, A-ming said she could hardly survive on her meager salary of NT$2,500 per month, not to mention repay her broker's fee and send money back home.
The caretaker came to Taiwan as a migrant worker through the introduction of a legitimate broker, but she was asked to work for employers who have no permit to hire foreign caretakers.
"They told me that I can't go out, saying that I would be seized by the police, and asked me to work every day. The work is hard," she said.
Lee Li-hua (
"The Filipino workers were forced to work more than 16 hours a day and were not allowed any days off in an entire year," Lee said.
"The second victim once requested sick leave when he was feeling unwell, but the request was denied," Lee said.
In an annual report on global human trafficking released by the US State Department in June, Taiwan was downgraded to the "Tier 2 Watch List" for failing to increase its efforts and lacking the political will to address the problem."
The US report also said that a "significant share" of foreign workers, mainly from Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, who are lured to the country for low-skilled jobs, end up in forced labor or slavery by labor agencies and employers.
"The foreign labor broker's system has a lot to do with the trafficking problem in Taiwan," Lei said, urging the government to abolish the broker system.
While the Council of Labor Affairs has said that brokers are allowed to charge the worker's first month's salary as the broker's fee on top of a 10 percent share of the worker's monthly salary as administration fee, Lei said that "this is not the real situation."
"I know that some migrant workers use the first three months of their salary to pay their brokers. Some even pay up to 20 months of their salary," Lei said.
"Many brokers also `detain' the migrant workers' identification cards on the pretext that this is a safeguard to prevent them from running away," Lei said.
"[That's the] same thing they do with their [the workers'] salaries, keeping up to 90 percent of the amount," Lei said, allegedly to prevent them from fleeing.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow