As the minimum monthly wage for new migrant fishers working on Taiwan’s distant-water fishing (DWF) fleets has increased by US$100 (NT$2,992) this month, employers have until the end of this year to update the salaries of those on old contracts, or face penalties of up to NT$250,000 or revocation of their licenses for one year, Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency said.
The salaries of migrant fishers employed on DWF fleets on and after May 20 are to receive a minimum monthly salary of US$550 starting this month, while those contracted before July 1 must receive the new minimum by January, Fisheries Agency Deep Sea Fisheries Division section chief Chiu Yi-hsien (邱宜賢) said on Sunday.
The minimum wage hike was approved by the Cabinet in April as part of broader plans to improve working conditions for migrant fishermen on DWF fleets, the Council of Agriculture said.
To clamp down on employers not willing to follow the new minimum and ensure better labor conditions, the Fisheries Agency is recruiting additional workers to conduct checks to ensure that labor conditions and pay are held to standard, with hopes to train 79 inspectors by the end of September, Chiu said.
The inspectors are to be stationed at the Yilan Nanfangao, Kaohsiung Cianjhen and Pingtung Donggang ports, he said.
“We will definitely do our part. If a fisher reports any wrongdoings, we will definitely hand down penalties, because their salary is an important and basic protection of their labor rights,” he said.
Concerns were raised by migrant fishers at an outreach event held at Haibin Seafood Restaurant near Cianjhen Fishing Port on Saturday evening.
The event was organized by Stella Maris Kaohsiung — a nonprofit organization dedicated to migrants, seafarers and refugees — and funded by the Fisheries Agency and the Scalabrini International Migration Network.
The outreach event was attended by 117 migrant fishers, who were informed of laws and regulations regarding their employment, and also treated to food, entertainment, and Indonesian and Filipino cultural dance performances.
The event was held to inform fishers of their rights and obligations, while also providing them opportunities to ask authorities questions related to their employment so that they can receive correct and reliable answers, said Stella Maris Chaplin Father Ansensius Guntur, who led the event.
It is meant to “listen to the fishers about their living conditions and the issues they have encountered in their fishing vessel,” he said. “By listening to them, we hope that the government can come up with better policies.”
Also attending the event were officials and international representatives from the Tainan Labor Affairs Bureau, the Manila Economic and Cultural Office Labor Center in Kaohsiung, the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office to Taipei, and the American Institute in Taiwan Kaohsiung branch office.
About 21,000 migrant fishers are employed on Taiwanese DWF fleets, including 13,000 Indonesians and 6,300 Filipinos, Chiu said.
Taiwan has one of the largest DWF fleets in the world. Rights groups such as Greenpeace and Taiwanese migrant groups have long raised concerns about abuse on Taiwan-owned vessels, including debt-bondage contracts, withheld wages, poor living conditions and beatings.
The government has been under increased pressure to deal with such problems after numerous incidents were reported in the past few years.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
RSS