Ministry of Labor defends foreign care worker flexibility plan

Taipei, Aug. 7 (CNA) The Ministry of Labor (MOL) on Wednesday defended a planned pilot program that would enable more flexible employment of foreign care workers after it was criticized as potentially undermining Taiwan's domestic workforce.

Under the proposed "pilot project for diversified companion care services," the government will allow "public welfare organizations" to employ foreign care workers and dispatch them to private homes to provide medical and general care services for one day, half a day or an even shorter time frame.

Under current rules, foreign care workers are generally employed on a live-in basis, residing with families who hire them to provide full-time care to someone living in that household.

As of the end of June, there were 241,532 foreign workers employed in caregiving or other social welfare functions, with more than three-quarters of them (77.2 percent) from Indonesia, according to MOL figures.

The proposed plan, which is expected to be launched later in the year, is aimed at offering greater flexibility in self-funded care for people who need it following major injuries or surgeries and others who require daily care or constant medical-related supervision.

At a press conference Wednesday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker Lin Yueh-chin (林月琴) joined the Peng Wan-Ru Foundation and others in voicing opposition to the ministry's pilot plan.

"The labor costs for foreign migrant workers are cheap. The salary level is lower than that of Taiwanese workers, and the labor supply is endless," said Wang Pin (王品), managing director of the Peng Wan-Ru Foundation.

The entry of "cheap hourly migrant workers" could "trigger a wave of unemployment" and cause the "collapse" of the long-term care service network in Taiwan, the NGO leader said.

Describing the pilot plan as "ridiculous," Lin said giving employment opportunities to foreign workers "violates the original position" that foreign labor should only be used to supplement labor shortages.

The Labor Ministry defended its plan in a press release posted on its website the same day.

According to the ministry, the pilot plan "establishes a new service model that allows public welfare groups in the professional care sector to become trainers and employers of foreign care workers."

Compared to the current "one-to-one" model, the new pilot plan represents a more flexible "one-to-many" model that can expand the scope of care provision, the MOL said.

Nonetheless, the ministry signaled that it would "continue to listen closely to suggestions from all parts of society, and appropriately evaluate and design mechanisms, content and implementation methods for the pilot plan."

Affected by rising life expectancy and falling birth rates, Taiwan faces an increasingly acute labor shortage in the care industry.

According to the National Development Council, the number of people over 65 years of age in Taiwan doubled from around 2 million in 2002 to 4.3 million in 2023.

Taiwan became an aged society in 2018, when over 14 percent of its population was 65 or older and will become a super-aged society in 2025 when the ratio exceeds 20 percent, the council said.