MOL announces pilot program for migrant care providers

HEALTHCARE:
The program would provide an alternative to full-time, live-in care by allowing foreign health care providers to serve multiple patients per day with a 10-hour rest break

The Ministry of Labor (MOL) said on Thursday it has officially launched a pilot program to deploy foreign healthcare workers to multiple households in a single day, potentially allowing the migrant caregivers to work up to 14 hours per day.

Under the new ‘Pilot Program for Diversified Companion Care Services’ established by the ministry, commercial and non-profit organizations would be allowed to hire foreign healthcare workers and send them to multiple homes for at least four hours in a single day. the ministry said.

Under current rules, foreign caregivers are typically deployed live-in, staying with families who hire them to provide full-time care to someone in that household.

Photo: CNA

The pilot program, launched Thursday, aims to provide more flexibility for self-funded care, the ministry said.

“Applicants for the program must meet certain criteria, such as having a disability certificate, proof of serious illness, post-surgery medical records, or be assessed as needing long-term care at levels 2 to 8,” Su said Yu-kuo. (蘇裕國), Head of the Cross-Border Workforce Management Department of the Ministry’s Workforce Development Agency.

“The services offered may include providing basic daily care, guiding going out, guiding medical treatment, providing safe companionship, and so on,” Su said.

The minimum care time for each migrant worker sent to a home would be four hours, and if it is a 24-hour request, it should include “10 hours of rest,” Su said.

Despite announcing the launch of the program, the ministry has not decided how much a household would pay for the labor of migrant caregivers under the plan, nor has it provided information on how much the caregivers could earn.

“The service fees would be determined after (the potential commercial or nonprofit organizations) submitted their plans, and a selection committee would review them,” Su said.

The ministry yesterday held a briefing with more than 30 potential healthcare organizations and said application applications would be released soon.

The ministry expects at least three commercial or non-profit organizations in the country’s northern, central and southern regions to hire about 10 foreign healthcare workers each in the first year of the program, Su said.

In August, the ministry’s program was criticized by lawmakers and non-governmental organizations as potentially undermining the domestic workforce, as foreign migrant workers can legally be paid less than Taiwanese workers.

The monthly salary for live-in migrant caregivers and domestic helpers is NT$20,000, almost a third lower than the NT$27,470 minimum wage guaranteed to Taiwanese workers under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).

At the end of June, there were 241,532 foreign workers working in healthcare or other social services, more than three-quarters (77.2 percent) of whom came from Indonesia, ministry data show.