Vietnamese labourers who want to work abroad in Taiwan have to pay higher fees than regulated by the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs.

Under the ministry’s regulations, a person has to pay a maximum fee of US$4,000 for a labour export company to work in Taiwan. The fee includes expenses for agency, recruitment, passport and other legal procedures.

However, the real fee was much higher, Voice of Vietnam’s online newspaper VOV reported yesterday.

Nguyen Van Tuan of Nghe An Province said he had to pay $4,500 for the fee to work in Taiwan a few years ago. But now it was different. Labour export companies often required Tuấn’s friends to pay a fee of $5,500 to $6,500 to work in Taiwan.

Explaining the situation, Tran Lan, deputy head of the Corporation Import Export Trade Co-operation Vietnam International Human Resources Joint Stock Company (Vinaincomex) – a company with 15 years of experience sending people to work in Taiwan - said the company calculated that if a labourer paid a fee of $4,500 and signed a contract that allowed them two hours of extra time daily, they could earn more money.

It brought them more benefits compared with paying a fee of $4,000 and having no extra time, she said.

Nguyen Luong Trao, chairman of the Vietnam Labour Export Association, said the issue needed to be fixed, but it required co-operation between labour export companies and labourers, he said.

Trao also said Taiwan was a potential market so a lot of labourers still wanted to work there, despite the high fees, since they could earn money.

Statistics from the ministry’s Vietnam Association of Manpower Supply showed that more than 67,100 people were sent to work in Taiwan in 2015, accounting for 66.7 per cent of the total number of labourers sent to Northeast Asian countries in 2015.

Vietnam began sending workers to Taiwan in 1999. Eighty per cent were domestic helpers. In 2005, Taiwan stopped accepting them due to the high number who left their place of employment while in Taiwan working illegally.

VNS