New Taipei City authorities on Tuesday detained a group of foreign workers for questioning after a massive raid of a slaughterhouse, police said yesterday.
National Immigration Agency officials said that 85 of the workers — mostly from Vietnam and Indonesia — were working illegally at New Taipei City Poultry Marketing Cooperative and Affiliated Slaughterhouse in the city’s Taishan District (泰山).
It was the greatest number of illegal foreign workers detained in a single raid over the past decade, officials said.
Photo: Tseng Chien-ming, Taipei Times
Of them, 67 were on the run after fleeing from their legal contract jobs, while 18 had overstayed their tourist visas and were working illegally, New Taipei City Sinjhuang (新莊) Police Precinct Chief Chang Kuo-hsiung (張國雄) said.
“They are mostly between 20 and 30 years old, from Vietnam and Indonesia,” Chang said. “Other migrant workers and brokers connected the workers with the slaughterhouse, which paid them about NT$25,000 per month.”
The raid was conducted at about 11pm by more than 200 officers from New Taipei City police units, the Criminal Investigation Bureau and a military police brigade, in addition to officials and investigators from the immigration agency and the Ministry of Labor.
The slaughterhouse, established in 2013 by the Council of Agriculture and the New Taipei City Government, is capable of supplying up to 28,000 chickens, ducks and other fowl daily.
Police officials said they acted on reports by residents who saw many foreign workers entering the slaughterhouse late at night and suspected that the employers were skirting regulations on working hours and breaching employment standards.
The slaughterhouse was seriously contravening the Employment Service Act (就業服務法), especially as 78 illegal foreign workers were caught in the facility in September last year, Chang said.
The maximum punishment for such an offense is a three-year sentence, while the foreign workers are to be deported and prohibited from entering Taiwan for five years.
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