Lawmakers from across party lines yesterday questioned the government’s easing of rules on hiring migrant domestic workers, saying that the policy could weaken professional childcare standards and shift the care burden from the state onto families and workers.
Since the Cabinet in the middle of last month approved a plan to ease rules on hiring migrant domestic workers, allowing households with at least one child under the age of 12 to apply, the policy has sparked both support and concern ahead of its implementation on April 13.
At a legislative hearing, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Cheng-chun (邱鎮軍) described the government’s move as “abandoning the bottom line of professional care” for children in an estimated 1.44 million eligible households.
Photo: Li Ching-hui, Taipei Times
“The government’s policy has now been simplified to the idea that as long as someone is watching the children so that adults can go to work in factories or offices, it is a successful policy,” Chiu said.
With public childcare services falling short and local nannies too expensive, he said that by turning to migrant domestic workers, the government no longer seemed concerned about the quality of childcare.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said that the policy amounted to the government shifting care responsibilities and related burdens onto families, which would then pass the pressure on to migrant workers.
Calling it “a typical chain of downward-flowing responsibility,” she said that the policy would widen class disparities.
Middle-class families would struggle to afford it, low-income households would be unable to use it and high-income families would be largely unaffected, Lin said.
Nannies are expected to provide professional services such as healthcare and guidance for children’s early development, Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰)said, adding that “these are, of course, not tasks migrant domestic workers can perform.”
In his presentation to the lawmakers, Hung said that migrant domestic workers under the new policy are positioned as “auxiliary household helpers” to assist with daily housework and living support, and are not meant to replace professional childcare services.
“It is intended to give families with different needs another option, and in practice, families will make different choices based on their own needs, rather than all opting to use domestic workers,” he said.
In an effort to “balance fairness with care needs,” the government would adopt “differentiated measures” for disadvantaged and special-needs households, including priority review and a reduced employment security fee of NT$2,000 per worker per month, instead of the standard NT$5,000, Hung said.
The security fee is a government levy used to support labor welfare and the management of migrant workers.
Meanwhile, foreign employers would be required to pay NT$10,000 per worker per month.