Margarita M. Phillips 
The Control Yuan has urged the Labor Ministry to improve its oversight of migrant workers’ compensation after a report found that many who became disabled as a result of work-related injuries in Taiwan did not apply. disability benefits after returning home.
The Control Yuan made the request after approving an investigation report written by two of its 27 members.
Unclaimed compensation owed to migrant workers with disabilities due to work-related injuries over the past 10 years amounted to NT$40 million ($1.44 million), Wang Mei-yu (王美玉) said. , a member of Control Yuan, at a press conference in Taipei on Tuesday.
Photo courtesy of Hualien County Government via CNA
It’s a national disgrace in terms of efforts to protect migrant workers, said Wang, who co-wrote the report with Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲).
Taiwan currently has around 700,000 migrant workers, having opened its doors to foreign workers more than 30 years ago. From 2015 to 2018, the disability rate of migrant workers caused by work-related accidents in the manufacturing sector was twice that of local workers, Wang Yu-ling said.
A survey found that between 2016 and 2020, 1,087 migrant workers with work permits received disability compensation, of whom 512 terminated their employment contracts, she said.
More than 50% of migrant workers who were entitled to a disability pension and returned to their country of origin stopped receiving pension payments, according to the report.
This was due to difficulties in claiming their Disability Living Allowance due to the complicated application procedures stipulated in the Labor Insurance Disability Benefit Payment Standards and the Workers’ Compensation Law. Labor (職災勞工保護法), according to the report.
The high amount of unclaimed disability benefits owed to migrant workers is giving Taiwan a bad name and tarnishing its image, Wang Mei-yu said.
The report also revealed a series of problems faced by migrant workers in claiming disability and other forms of compensation after an accident at work.
During one of their on-site visits, factory officials said without hesitation that migrant workers were usually assigned to the most dangerous jobs, Wang Mei-yu said.
The investigation also revealed that some unscrupulous employers failed to enroll their legally employed migrant workers in the EI program, while others immediately filed applications to remove their migrant workers from the program after they were disabled or injured on the job, Wang Mei-yu said.
In addition, most of those who were disabled or injured in workplace accidents were replaced by new arrivals, she said.
After conducting site visits and interviewing eight migrant workers disabled by work-related accidents, they found that their employers had hardly arranged medical care or provided compensation, Wang Yu-ling said.
Moreover, employers did not help them with vocational rehabilitation, which is against the Labor Standards Law (勞動基準法), she said.
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