FORCED LABOR: Schools participating in an internship program are required to submit copies of the students’ contracts and salary records to the Ministry of Education
Taipei Times
Date: Apr 09, 2019
By: Wu Po-hsuan / Staff reporter
The Ministry of Education has taken measures to prevent universities and colleges from
The Ministry of Education building is pictured in Taipei on March 13.Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
forcing Southeast Asian students into manual labor, Deputy Minister of Education Lio Mon-chi (劉孟奇) said yesterday.
The ministry had previously given great liberty to schools offering internship programs as part of the government’s New Southbound Policy, but after discovering how the regulations have been abused, it has inspected nine schools and set down new requirements for all institutes participating in the program, Lio said.
He was referring to a series of scandals last year and this year in which Yu Da University of Science and Technology, the University of Kang Ning and Hsing Wu University were accused of collaborating with personnel agencies to trick Southeast Asian students into performing illegal work unrelated to the internship they signed up for.
The internship program is designed to provide training to students who might be hired as middle-level managers by Taiwanese companies after graduation, Liu said.
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