A new report by Greenpeace details 10 incidents of forced labor on 12 Taiwanese fishing ships since 2019. Researchers say migrant fishers are vulnerable to abuse, and that unregulated recruitment agencies and a lack of oversight of Taiwanese fishing vessels are to blame.
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00:00Greenpeace Southeast Asia has released a new report on the exploitation that
00:04migrant fishers face, detailing 10 incidents of forced labor on 12 Taiwanese
00:10fishing vessels since 2019. Taiwan is home to the second largest global fleet
00:15of distant water fishing vessels and over 20,000 migrant fishers. The NGOs
00:20detailing abuses Indonesian workers have experienced here. They said they found
00:24that 92 percent of the fishers they interviewed felt that they were taken
00:28advantage of and many of them were trapped into staying in exploitative
00:32work environments due to debt. Two-thirds also reported having their wages
00:36withheld and cases of physical violence and threats in the workplace were also
00:40reported. Greenpeace says exploitative Indonesian recruitment agencies and lack
00:45of oversight on the Taiwanese fishing companies means fishers easily fall into
00:49forced labor.
01:11Migrant fishers in Taiwan are mostly from Indonesia, Vietnam and the
01:16Philippines and this NGO hopes that with more regulations on these
01:20recruitment companies and more oversight on Taiwanese fishing vessels, they can
01:25work in a safe and humane environment. John Su and Tiffany Wong in Taipei for
01:30Taiwan Plus.