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Taiwan caretakers jobs an alternative labor market

 

The grim reality of sending our domestic workers to the Middle East is now apparent once more with two recent deaths in the host country of Kuwait. One OFW Jenenly Alvarado died allegedly an accident when she suffocated with two other Nepalese while another OFW was found dead after two months at the house of her employer.

The DMW is studying options on a deployment ban or to introduce more restrictions on sending workers to Kuwait.

 

According to migrant expert Emmanuel Geslani Taiwan is a better alternative for women who want to work as caretakers\domestic workers for Taiwan with the higher salary and safer environment for senior citizens care compared to other countries in the Middle East.

Taiwan jobs in the senior care sctor offers a safe and ideal for our OFWs with the possibility of working for a long as 14 years with their employers who are mostly 80 years and below ensuring for them a continuous income for their them and their families.

However deployment of Filipino caretakers to Taiwan remains quite low compared to Indonesia who send more caretakers that is why the country is lagging behind due to current DMW policy on caretakers.

Deployment of caretakers to Taiwan only 24,000 OFWs compared to Indonesia’s 180,000 and slowly going down with the annual demand for caretakers in Taiwan set at 10,000 yearly?

Taiwan a highly developed economy and our nearest neighbor has an aging population of 530,000 senior citizens over 80 years old and with a new amendment recently approved by Taiwanese legislators senior citizens between the ages of 70-79 main now avail of senior care the number of senior citizens may double that would necessitate the demand for more caregivers in the next five years.

Taiwan offers a monthly salary for caregivers $ 550-600 USD equivalent to P 35,000 thousand pesos compared to $ 400 USD monthly salary for domestic workers set by the DMW.

The Philippines was the pioneer in the caretakers deployment in the early 2000’s until 2010 when we had to reduce deployment as caretakers were re-classified by the POEA\DMW as unskilled and included it in the domestic workers category prohibiting the collection of placement fees.

This move resulted in lower deployment of caretakers to Taiwan as many agencies sending workers did not want to violate the no placement rule that results in immediate cancellation of their license.

In meantime Indonesia moved into the caretaker market with the decline of Philippine deployment in the caretaker labor market.

At present there are 230,000 caretakers in Taiwan, 180,000 Indonesia, 25,000 Philippines, 15,000 Vietnam ad 300 from Thailand.

Meanwhile the group of agencies sending to Taiwan has continuously appealed to the Department of Migrant Workers to re-classify caretakers as semi-skilled workers as their work requires additional training and experience to be able to fully satisfy the work for senior citizens of Taiwan.

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