MANILA, Philippines — Migrants rights advocates on Thursday warned that Taiwan's Council of Labor Affairs is considering to reduce the number of of foreign workers in the manufacturing sector by a further 30,000 this year.
The Hongkong based Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) said this could mean another 8,868 OFWs could be retrenched this year.
APMM said CLA's Employment and Vocational Training Administration data showed that in October 2008 there were about 85,465 OFWs in Taiwan, of which 61,446 were from the manufacturing industry; 22,869 were caregivers and domestic helpers, 815 crewmen and 335 construction workers.
Last January, however, the same data indicated that the numbers of OFWs declined to a total 75,871. The total number of workers in the manufacturing decreased to 52,003, indicating that about 9,443 OFWs were retrenched during the period.
Filipino workers in construction companies also suffered from 335 down to 211, with some 124 workers affected, while the number of caregivers and domestic helpers went down to 22,815 .
Only crewmen workers increased by 27 to 842 from 815 data showed.
APMM also disputed reports that no OFWs in Taiwan were retrenched during the month of February. Records of Migrante-Taiwan indicated that there were at least 200 workers laid off during that time. And Taiwan’s CLA statistics indicate that from October 2008 to January 2009 there was a reduction of 9,574 OFWs in Taiwan. Of these, 9,443 came from the manufacturing sector.
So if the Manila Economic Council Office or MECO claims that 4,445 new workers were deployed to Taiwan during the same period, this simply means that the net outflow of OFWs was more or 14,019 in number, Gi Estrada APMM coordinator said.
Estrada also warned that the CLA is also inclined to implement subcontracting of migrant workers by its proposal to have contracts between brokers and migrants and between brokers and employers. In effect the employers of the OFWs would be the exploitative Taiwanese brokers, APMM said.
“It is predicted that the Philippine government would accept the latter with nary a word of protest to ensure that its labor export policy remains unimpeded. In the first place the Arroyo regime would rather send more people abroad even if their labor and human rights are violated instead of letting them go back home where they might become more troublesome to the government because the situation is far more worse, the group said. - GMANews.TV