By 4-Way Voice | Translated by Vivian Hsiao, The China Post, Taiwan |
TAIPEI (The China Post) — The recent re-opening of borders for Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan has been met with mostly positive reactions as families who are in desperate need of domestic caregivers are finally given a reprieve.
However, there are still many problems underlying Taiwan’s migrant workers’ employment system, which need to be addressed by both the government and the people.
In an interview with 4-Way Voice and The China Post, Taiwan International Workers Association (TIWA, 國際勞工協會) coordinator Betty Chen (陳容柔) shed light on the hardships migrant workers face in Taiwan.
Having served in the association for more than 12 years, Chen has assisted numerous cases and witnessed many inhumane incidents firsthand.
One such case involved a Vietnamese woman who ran from her original employer and found work cooking for ladies in hostess bars. Later, she was arrested and stayed in a shelter for some time awaiting repatriation. However, the long hours proved too much for her and she later became mentally unstable.
Chen revealed that she had a deeper understanding of the reasons behind the mental disorder, revealing that during the five years when the Vietnamese woman worked as an undocumented migrant worker, she never once received a paycheck from her supposed employers.
The crooked employer merely showed her some numbers on her passbook, and after her arrest, they denied ever knowing her nor hiring her to work at the hostess bar.
With no money for the hard work she put in the past five years, she ultimately broke down and was inconsolable.
Chen remarked, “It’s evident that legal migrant workers are safer and have more rights, so why are migrant workers still risking their lives to flee and become undocumented workers in Taiwan?”
She pointed out that this may be indicative of Taiwan’s faulty system, and shared another story regarding disadvantaged employers and migrant domestic workers fighting for more resources and better lives.
According to Chen, many employers are low-income households who are unable to provide higher salaries but also expect migrant domestic workers to handle everything in the house.
She recalled a case where she was asked to mediate between a half-paralyzed grandmother who couldn’t take care of her husband, an elderly man no longer able to take care of himself, and their migrant domestic worker.
Chen said the house had 6 young children at the time, with the youngest just entering kindergarten. At that time, the Indonesian caregiver working in their home was only paid NT$17,000 as her monthly salary but had to take care of both the grandparents, handle all the housework, and send the kids to school.
Having no personal time off all year round, she finally wasn’t able to take it anymore and called for mediation, hoping that her employer could give her a raise or hire more people to alleviate her workload.
“At the meeting, the migrant worker burst into tears, and kept saying in English she loved the grandparents, but she just couldn’t take it anymore,” Chen said.
She continued, “Her employers were also in tears, wanting to convince her to stay but didn’t have the money to provide a raise.”
“In the end, both parties were in tears, agonized by the situation.”
Chen remarked that the migrant worker actually took great care of the employers and was very worried about their future when she was preparing to leave.
She kept asking Chen “What would happen to the elderly man?” However, the unbearable situation made her unable to stay any longer and she could only bid the family goodbye with tears in her eyes.
Chen noted that the minimum wage for migrant domestic workers, the disgraceful banning of letting migrant workers head out at Miaoli and re-opening borders to migrant workers all need the attention of the public and the government to make working conditions better for them in Taiwan.