Staff Writer, with CNA
A small-scale protest that called on the government to cancel its plan to welcome Indian migrant workers in a bid to tackle Taiwan’s labor shortage was held in Taipei yesterday.
During the protest, comprised of a few dozen people staged in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard, the protest’s chief initiator, a woman identified only as “Yuna” said they wanted the central government to reconsider allowing migrant workers from India to enter Taiwan.
Most people in Taiwan had little knowledge about the potential plan to allow in Indian migrant workers until a report in the media last month, she said.
Photo: CNA
She also said the government failed to explain why migrant workers from “yet another source country” needed to be introduced, adding that the government had not provided a comprehensive evaluation report on how it had concluded that this move was essential.
She alleged, without evidence, that more migrant workers in Taiwan would lead to stagnant wages.
There are “more than 80,000 unaccounted for migrant workers,” which was “causing security concerns in the country,” she said.
She called on the government to address current problems in the workforce before introducing more migrant workers and to properly supervise those already in the country.
The report she was referring to is a Bloomberg piece released on Nov. 10 which stated that India and Taiwan were in talks over “tens of thousands of workers being sent to the island as early as next month.”
Taiwan “could hire as many as 100,000 Indians to work at factories, farms and hospitals,” the Bloomberg report said, citing Taiwanese officials who had asked not to be identified.
In response, the Taiwanese government confirmed an employment mobility agreement could be signed before the end of this year.
However, Minister of Labor Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) said the figure of 100,000 workers was “inaccurate” and that talks were ongoing.
The planned introduction is meant to help tackle the labor shortage in Taiwan, the Ministry of Labor said in a Nov. 15 press release, adding that all migrant workers will have to provide proof of not having a criminal record.
About 2,700 Indian workers are currently employed in professional jobs in Taiwan, such as in the high-tech sector, the ministry data showed.
There were about 750,000 migrant workers in Taiwan as of the end of September, with the majority coming from Indonesia (267,194), ahead of Vietnam (261,301) and the Philippines (152,026), showed the ministry’s data.
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