Taiwan Church News 3293 Edition April 6 - 12, 2015 Church Ministry Micro-insurance Is Launched In Taoyuan City To Protect Urban Aboriginal Workers From Occupational Injuries At Site Reported by Hwang Yi-lek from Taoyuan Though many aboriginal people go to urban areas to find their livings, yet the jobs waiting for them are mostly labor-intensive kinds: construction, transportation and harbor coolie etc. As their salary and savings are quite limited, once there is any accidental injury happened at the working site, the expenditure for emergency first aid and the related medical treatment is usually so high and beyond their financial capability to handle. Even worse is that some employers of labor-intensive industries avoid to pay any labor insurance cost for urban aboriginals. This makes the situations even hard to be sustainable for the injury-inflicted urban aboriginal workers. Faced upon this problem, the first micro-insurance project for aboriginal workers is launched by the Deartment of Indigenous Affairs in 2015. Within this project, once the injuries happened at working site, any urban aboriginal people above 15 years old would be eligible for an micro-insurance of 300 thousands NT Dollars. It is estimated that 48 thousands aboriginal people would be covered in this micro-insurance project. Ms Kolas Yotaka, Chief of Department of Indigenous Affairs and a former TV producer from Amis tribe, expresses that this is the first case of micro-insurance for the urban aboriginal workers in Taiwan. Though the amount of insuance is still limited, the prime purpose is to give first aid and relieve the economic pressure of the injured workers and their families. As this micro-insurance project, which annual budget is 17.2 millions NT Dollars, is now under review by Taoyuan City Council, it is planned to launch from August 2015 if everything going smooth. Translated by Peter Wolfe |