A U.S. special diplomatic envoy asked Taiwan government to ban the collection of different kind of fees like recruitment fees, service fees, or deposits from migrant workers to prevent human trafficking.
The request was delivered in a pre-recorded message by U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking-in-Persons John Cotton Richmond and was played in Taipei at the 2020 International Workshop on Combating Human Trafficking.
"Taiwan should ban recruitment agencies and employers from charging foreign workers recruitment fees, service fees, or deposits -- and they should enforce the ban. Employers should bear these costs," Richmond said in a report from CNA.
These fees create vulnerabilities among migrant workers that later allow them to be exploited by unscrupulous labor recruitment brokerage systems.
"The authorities can then strengthen efforts of oversight over all foreign worker recruitment and placement agencies and processes to screen for these abusive indicators and stop them before they lead to human trafficking," Richmond added.
Taiwan has about 700,000 foreign workers employed mainly across the country's caregiving and manufacturing sectors with some workers incur substantial debts to pay recruitment brokers.
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