In a BBC report, one of the 1,000 Cambodians recruited for Taiwan’s fishing boats said he worked close to 24-hour shifts on insufficient food in slave conditions’.
Greenpeace Taiwan has urged the government to better protect Taiwanese fishermen, as well as overseas crew members working in Taiwan’s fishing industry.
The group made the call in light of a recent case of Cambodian fishermen who were trafficked by a Taiwanese-managed agency.
According to a report from BBC News Asia on Tuesday last week, about 1,000 Cambodians who were recruited from 2009 by a Taiwanese-managed agency Giant Ocean International Co were exploited under harsh conditions while they worked on fishing boats mostly registered under Taiwanese owners.
The workers were sent to waters off Japan, Malaysia, Fiji, Africa and Qatar and forced to work for almost 24 hours a day, the report quoted.
They were paid about half the promised salary and not given enough food, it said.
Cambodian nongovernmental organization Legal Support for Children and Women and some workers who were rescued off the boats were quoted in the report.
A 34-year-old Cambodian rice farmer surnamed Yim who worked for Giant Ocean was cited as saying: I was often whipped by my captain when I was sick or could not work or worked slowly.
I couldn’t even communicate with my family. My working conditions were like that of a slave, the report cited him as saying.
The report quoted an official of Fisheries Agency as saying that Taiwan-registered fishing boats are required to report to authorities information about the workers, who are protected by labor laws, but in practice the crews are hard to monitor.
According to an Agence France-Presse report in April, the owner of the now-defunct Giant Ocean, a Taiwanese woman surnamed Lin (?), and five associates, were sentenced to 10 years’ jail by a Cambodian court and ordered to pay damages and compensation to the more than 150 victims.
Greenpeace Taiwan campaigner Yen Ning (??) said overfishing is leading to the depletion of ocean resources, with an increasing number of fishing boats keeping their costs low by oppressing workers to cope with increased difficulties in the industry.
Yen said that foreign fishermen play an important role in Taiwan’s fishing industry, but the government has not provided them with enough legal protection.
She added said that Taiwanese working in other countries have also been victimized.
An average of about two to three cases have been reported in the past decade, which is a total of 40 Taiwanese captains who have been victimized, she said.
1999-2014 The Taipei Times