About 38 percent of foreign domestic workers in Taiwan have been verbally or physically abused by employers or household members, while less than half seek help, a survey conducted by the Garden of Hope Foundation found.
About 250,000 migrants work in Taiwanese households, more than 240,000 as caregivers and 1,800 as maids, foundation executive director Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) told a workshop yesterday.
As shown by 35 percent of respondents, most victims do not seek help after being exploited, physically attacked or even sexually assaulted because they fear losing their job, said Kaili Lee (李凱莉), director of the foundation’s foreign assistance center.
About 31 percent of respondents said they did not seek help because of their inability to speak Chinese, while 26 percent said they did not know who to turn to for help, she said.
Those who sought help most often used the Ministry of Labor’s 24-hour 1995 hotline for foreign workers, labor brokerages, friends, relatives or local labor authorities, Lee added.
The survey, conducted in March, collected 510 valid questionnaires from foreign domestic workers — 400 from the Philippines, 104 from Indonesia and six from Vietnam — 60 percent of whom had worked in Taiwan for more than three years.
Although it is illegal in Taiwan for employers to keep a domestic helper’s passport, national health insurance card or residency permit, more than 20 percent of respondents said that their employer kept their documents, Lee said.
The results showed that about 84 percent of caregivers said they were the only one looking after the person in need, while 35 percent said they rarely had eight hours of uninterrupted rest a day.
Although Taiwan raised the monthly wage for foreign domestic helpers from NT$15,840 to NT$17,000 in September 2015, 29.61 percent of respondents received less than that per month, the results showed.
The results showed that the failure of employers to provide safe accommodation and their failure to provide substitute help correlated highly with incidences of sexual abuse against domestic helpers, Lee said, adding that not having substitute help was especially predictive of abuse.
Foreign domestic helpers, who are not covered by the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), need the consent of their employer to receive a pay hike, which is why nearly one-third of them have stagnant wages, analysts said.
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