NGOs call for better protection of migrant fishers under gov't action plan

Taipei, June 5 (CNA) Two years after Taiwan's government approved an Action Plan for Fisheries and Human Rights, efforts to ensure the basic rights of migrant fishers are still inadequate, civic groups said on Wednesday, urging the authorities to address problems in the distant water fishery sector.

The Cabinet approved the plan on May 20, 2022 to improve fishing crew rights, onboard facilities and onshore facilities. It is scheduled to run until 2025.

At a press conference on Wednesday, an alliance of civic groups concerned with the basic rights of migrant fishers published a mid-term review of the plan, noting that Taiwan has done badly in fulfilling labor standards, improving living conditions and social security, and improving management and monitoring of shipowners.

Taiwan received a rating of one out of three stars in each category.

Greenpeace ocean campaigner Yuton Lee (李于彤) pointed to the lack of internet access on most Taiwanese fishing vessels, which has rendered channels set up by the Fisheries Agency for migrant distant-water fishers to file complaints over potential infringements of their rights obsolete.

So far, only 98 out of more than 1,000 Taiwanese distant-water fishing vessels, less than 10 percent, have had Wi-Fi installed, Lee added.

Shih Yi-hsiang (施逸翔), a senior researcher at the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, said the Fisheries Agency recently drafted guidelines regarding Wi-Fi use on distant-water fishing vessels, which recommended allowing crew members "at least 40 MB or three hours of data use each month," which he called "grossly insufficient."

Lennon Wong (汪英達), director of migrant worker policies at the Serve the People Association in Taoyuan, criticized the agency for working with representatives from the seafood industry to draw up the "terrible" guidelines while ignoring suggestions proposed by civic groups.

Other issues that contributed to the scathing scores included delayed salary payments, excessive working hours, the failure to incorporate the C188 Work in Fishing Convention (C188) adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) into domestic law, according to the groups.

"Pre-planned" interviews of migrant distant-water fishers and poor interpretation quality which compromises the ability to assess migrant fishers' working conditions were also among the issues pointed out by the groups.

The United States and the European Union are both major markets for Taiwan's distant-water fishing sector, and both place great emphasis on human rights, Lee said.

Taiwan's distant-water fishing industry is therefore in pressing need of reform if it is to retain its global competitiveness, she said.

The recently inaugurated administration of President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) should identify ways to improve or enforce the action plan, she added.

In response, the Fisheries Agency said in a statement that the aforementioned guidelines on migrant fishers' Wi-Fi use have not been finalized and that a final version will be published at a later date.

Interviews conducted by the agency follow a standard procedure and use standardized survey questions to ascertain whether migrant fishers have been subject to mistreatment, the agency said.

The agency further uses a questionnaire titled "assessment of possible exploitation of foreign crew members" created by the Ministry of the Interior to determine whether there is forced labor on Taiwanese-flagged fishing vessels, it added.

A draft bill to adopt the ILO-C188 is expected to be delivered to the Cabinet for review this year before it is deliberated by the Legislature, it added.