May 19, 2021 — Taiwan’s lucrative seafood industry is back under the gun after the country’s top government watchdog demanded corrective measures to prevent forced labor aboard fishing boats.
The Control Yuan, Taiwan’s official government ombudsman body, has issued a series of demands to three government entities due to their failure to address systemic work abuse against the predominantly Southeast Asian fishermen working on Taiwanese vessels.
The United States Department of Labor last year listed fish caught by Taiwanese vessels as products of forced labor, a label that could serve as a basis for government decisions to block imports from Taiwan’s $1.3 billion seafood industry.
Wang Yu-ling, a member of the Control Yuan, said earlier this month that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Labor, and the Fisheries Agency had done nothing to address the issue, despite knowing the environmental organization Greenpeace planned to share findings from its own research with the U.S. government.