Foreign workers and rights advocates yesterday staged a flash mob demonstration in the lobby of the Taipei Railway Station, urging the government to extend the protection of the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) to all foreign workers, and calling attention to the abuse of migrant workers.
At 11:30am, a group of migrant workers from the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as rights advocates from Taiwan and Malaysia, showed up in the lobby of the Taipei Railway Station unexpectedly, dancing to Philippine music while holding signs in English that read: “Justice to all migrant workers” and “we are women, we are workers, we are not slaves.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to show our support to migrant workers in Taiwan and elsewhere, to call on the government to grant equal rights to migrant and Taiwanese workers,” members of Philippine workers’ organization Migrante International and Indonesian workers’ organization ATKI-Taiwan told onlookers drawn by the music and the dance in Mandarin and Indonesian through loudspeakers.
Photo: CNA
“We also need your support in our campaign. Please join us in our action if you would, thank you very much,” they added.
Event spokesman Wong Ying-dah (汪英達) said there is a globally coordinated campaign in which rights advocates are to show up unexpectedly in public places and dance to raise public awareness about women’s rights on Valentine’s Day.
“However, we feel that in Taiwan, foreign domestic helpers — who are mostly women — are in worse conditions, so we decided to focus the campaign on the issue of migrant workers,” Wong said, adding that since this year’s Valentine’s Day falls on Friday and most foreign workers have to work, they decided to move the event to yesterday instead.
“Working conditions are bad for foreign domestic helpers, because they are not covered by the Labor Standards Act, so while the legal monthly minimum wage is more than NT$19,000 [US$626], foreign domestic helpers are getting only NT$15,840 — and their actual salary is lower after deductions,” Wong said. “In addition, as domestic helpers, they usually have to be on standby 24 hours a day, and many of them rarely get days off.”
AKIT-Taiwan president Lukman, a factory worker from Indonesia, echoed Wong, saying that one of his organization’s members had only one day off a year.
“And whether you’re working at someone’s home or at a factory, you can only get NT$12,000 to NT$13,000 a month on average, after deductions,” Lukman said. “That’s why we’re calling for help from the Taiwanese government.”
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS