Press Release
July 27, 2005
Reference: Aurelio Estrada
(852)2723-7536
(852)9747-0546

MECO Washes Its Hands Off Overcharging Case

The Manila Economic and Cultural Office’s (MECO) Labor Representative Reynaldo Gopez essentially washed his hands off on an overcharging case in Taiwan. Instead of pursuing the case to the Council of Labor Affairs’ (CLA) national office, Mr. Gopez conveniently passed the burden to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).

This pertains to the case of the five Fu Lin caretakers in Hsinchu County wherein they got their maximum demands for overtime and separation pay only after their case was publicized by the Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) and Migrante Sectoral Party – Taiwan chapter in the media. All five were not able to get a single cent from the broker for overcharging his fees as Mr. Gopez deemed it would be better to pursue this in the Philippines. His basis is that the workers signed a promissory note and agreement in the Philippines.

This is despite the fact that there was strong evidence that the broker, Dallas Huang of Virtue Human Resources Inc., collected the illegal fees. Mr. Huang signed his name to a sheet of paper demanded by each of the five workers when he made the illegal collections. This is under the heading “brokers fee and salary deduction year 2004”.

Secondly, there exists an agreement between the CLA and its labor counterparts from labor exporting countries that they will only honor the employment contract and the Fees and Salary Declaration Form in overcharging of brokers/placement fees. Other documents such as the promissory note and side agreement are non-binding.

Third, it is illegal under the Labor Standards Law of Taiwan for loans to be automatically deducted by the employer from the wages of his employees. Fourth, the promissory note and agreement which each of the workers signed did not indicate to whom they were indebted to. However, the names of the broker’s company and the employer were written in the former while the latter stated that their loan would be automatically be deducted by their employer.

As such when the Hsinchu County Labor Bureau (HCLB) did not invoke these above four, what Mr. Gopez should have done was to raise this issue to the national office of the CLA. Besides referring this to the POEA, Mr. Gopez also signed the minutes of the conciliation meeting with the HCLB that deleted the part that Mr. Huang overcharged the migrants. In the first conciliation meeting where Ms. Lydia Espinosa took part, this was stated in the minutes and that Mr. Huang even offered to give back ¾ of the overcharged fees.

Adding insult to injury, when the 5 brought their complaint to the POEA they were disheartened by the attitude of the conciliation officer. They were told by Atty. Fung of the POEA that they better settle with their placement agency as they might spend more for following up their case than in getting what are owed to them. It is like saying that they should not pursue their case against their broker.

We therefore demand that MECO resume filing a case against the broker for overcharging at the national CLA office and see to it that he be prosecuted for this. If the CLA does not want to pursue the case, MECO should file a court case against Virtue Human Resources Inc. Mr. Dallas Huang of said company had also overcharged other Filipino caretakers in Taoyuan and Sanshia. There are pending cases against him for this in the Philippines and in Taiwan.

At the same time, we demand that Mr. Gopez be investigated for the fiasco that he has made. He should either atone for this mistake or resign from his post for his incompetence.