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.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
RSS