A couple in Chiayi City could face a fine and criminal responsibility for forcing their Indonesian worker, a Muslim, to cook pork and work long hours, an official said yesterday.
The employer could be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000 if found guilty of violating the Employment Services Act (就業服務法), said Fu Hui-chih (傅慧芝), a foreign worker management section chief at the Council of Labor Affairs.
Fu said any of the more than 190,000 foreign caregivers in Taiwan could call the “1955” hotline to seek government protection if their rights are violated.
Fu’s remarks came one day after police in Chiayi City said the Indonesian worker recently went to a police station to complain that when she came to Taiwan in January last year, she was misled into thinking she would be taking care of an elderly person.
Instead, the 27-year-old alleged that she had to work for up to 16 hours a day at a shop run by her employer in a traditional market and was forced to handle pork, which her religion forbids.
The police chief said the couple threatened to have her sent back to Indonesia if she did not comply with their demands.
To prevent her from absconding, the couple also withheld her wages for more than a year and tried to prevent her from communicating with anyone about this issue.
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The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
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New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese