Taiwan’s caregivers and domestic workers need a day off

March 12, 2010 -- For the occasion of Women’s Day, Caritas Taiwan participated in the rally organized by Migrant Empowerment Network in Taiwan in front of Executive Yuan on March 5, 2010. The NGOs have been lobbying the concerns of domestic workers and caregivers who are mostly women, to be included in the Labor Standards Law.

In the situation of Taiwan, caregivers who are also considered as domestic workers are working for as much as 12.5 hours a day and they neither received overtime pay nor avail of one day off per week because employers do not allow them. Thus, they are vulnerable to stress and some recourse to running-away from their employers and become irregular or undocumented.

For several years, the NGOs that are serving migrant workers have been lobbying for the revision of the Household Service Act which governs the domestic workers.

The basic needs of the workers should not be denied nor regarded as merely public responsibility. It should be included in the Labor Standards Law to protect the rights of the migrant workers.

According to the statistics of the Bureau of Employment and Vocation Training, Taiwan has a total number of 353,805 migrant workers as of January 2010, with Indonesians as the largest in number followed by Vietnamese, Filipinos and Thai.

For several years now, Justice and Peace and Caritas Taiwan has been serving Filipino, Indonesian, and Thai migrant workers. - Caritas Taiwan

New law on foreign workers passed in Kuwait

But controversial sponsor system stays

KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait—The Kuwaiti parliament passed a new labor law on Wednesday that grants better rights and conditions for the 2.3 million foreign workers but does not scrap the controversial sponsor system.

The new law, approved unanimously by lawmakers including cabinet members, replaces a 45-year-old law that was criticized as being favorable to employers at the expense of workers.

The legislation provides more rights for workers in the private sector, including better annual leave, end of service indemnities and holidays.

It also sets tougher penalties, including jail terms, for businessmen who trade in visas or who recruit expatriate workers and then fail to provide them with jobs, or who fail to pay salaries regularly.

Kuwait is home to 2.3 million foreigners, more than two-thirds of them Asians, including some 140,000 Filipinos (as of December 2007), and 1.1 million citizens.

The bill requires the government to introduce a minimum wage for certain jobs, especially in the lower-paid categories.

During the debate, several MPs criticized the old law as being oppressive to laborers and favorable to employers.

The new law, however, fails to address the much-criticized sponsor system under which all foreign workers must be sponsored by a Kuwaiti employer, thus keeping expatriates at the mercy of their bosses.

Other oil-rich Gulf states apply similar systems.

Nevertheless, the law requires the government to set up a public authority that takes on the responsibility of recruiting workers from abroad.

Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Mohammed al-Afasi has repeatedly said that the emirate was considering a gradual end to the system to meet international labor standards, but little action has been taken so far. - Agence France-Presse/inquirer.net, December 25, 2009