Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/05/24
By: Chen Chao-fu and S.C. Chang
Kaohsiung, May 24 (CNA) Up to 81 fishing boat crewmen from Southeast Asian and African
(Photo courtesy of the Kaohsiung Prosecutors Office)
countries were resettled from abhorrent living quarters Tuesday in this southern Taiwan port city during an investigation by prosecutors into suspected trafficking of Vietnamese workers.
Officials of the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors Office said the 81 workers, from Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Tanzania and Mozambique, were locked up and guarded in two locations in the city’s Qianzhen and Xiaogang districts.
In one of them, more than 10 workers slept on the floor in a jammed room, while in the other, up to 60 workers were living in a space of just 20 pings (66 square meters), according to the officials. No air conditioners were found in either place, they added.
The living conditions of the workers were horrible, and safety measures such as fire exits were “worrisome,” a clear indication that their employers were keeping them in an “unreasonable” environment, said the officials, quoting prosecutors Chan Mei-ling and Liu Mu-shan, who were in charge of probing the case. [FULL STORY]
