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Social care groups
criticize trade deal
HOME CARE CONCERNS: Only non-profits can operate
homes and care services for the elderly and disabled at present, and there is a
fear the industry will be commercialized
By Hsieh Wen-hua and Jason Pan / Staff reporter, with staff
writer
Denouncing the government for only giving details of the cross-strait service
trade agreement after it had been signed, a group of social care organizations
yesterday urged President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration to halt the
proposed opening of the home care industry to Chinese investors because the
agreement is unequal.
According to the group, under the terms in the pact signed on June 21, the
entire home care industry in Taiwan will be opened to Chinese companies, but
Taiwanese firms will only be able to make investments in two Chinese provinces.
Under the pact, Taiwan will permit service providers from China to set up, via
joint ventures, small-scale organizations for the care and social welfare of the
elderly and people with disabilities, and there will be no governmental control
over ventures in which the Chinese capital investment is 50 percent or less.
China will allow Taiwanese care providers to invest, through sole
proprietorships of private organizations of a non-business company nature, in
elderly care and nursing home services and welfare services for people with
disabilities, it said. However, they are restricted to ventures in Fujian and
Guangdong provinces.
Representatives from a coalition made up of the Taiwan Association of Senior
Citizen’s Institution (TASCI), the Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly (FWE),
the League of Welfare Organization for the Disabled and the Eden Social Welfare
Foundation, among others, said they see three main “inequalities” in the pact.
It violates Taiwan’s laws, places restrictions on modes of operation and places
restrictions on geographic regions of operation.
The groups said they are worried that once the pact takes effect, social care
services for the elderly and the disabled would be commercialized, its products
merchandized, and moved away from the service-providers of social networks.
“Elderly people are not merchandise,” TASCI chairperson Chen Liao Mei-fang
(陳廖梅芳) said.
“They worked hard through their lives for their family and they deserve good
care in their old age. For this service sector, a large number of care workers
are needed. It must not open up to become a commercial enterprise,” Chen said.
FWE secretary-general Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴) said that at present, the law stipulates
that only non-profit organizations can operate nursing homes and care services
for the elderly and people with disabilities in Taiwan.
“Why is the government now opening up for Chinese businesses to make profits in
this sector?” she said. “Even more questionable is that our government is
allowing Chinese companies coming to Taiwan to operate for profit, but China is
restricting Taiwanese proprietors operating for profit in China.”
Hsu Chun-chiang (許君強), deputy administration director at the Chao An Nursing
Home Center in Taipei, said that while the pact is an incentive for non-profit
Taiwanese organizations to operate social care services in Fujian and Guangdong
provinces, he knows what China’s “real intention” is.
“It wants Taiwan’s ‘know-how’ and our professionals. However, it will not let us
have the decisionmaking power and will not allow us to make profits there,” Hsu
said.
Under Chinese law, the chairperson of a company, a company’s legal
representatives and others, such as the founder and owner of a vocational
school, must be Chinese citizens.
Another FWE official said that non-profit organizations have to use all their
leftover funds to improve the quality of care and facility services, and cannot
allocate the money to individuals.
“However, businesspeople are profit-oriented. They generate revenue by raising
charges, collecting additional fees and reducing the number of workers, or use
chain franchise investment and other ways, possibly illegal, to trim operating
costs and eliminate competition,” the official said.
“This will impact on the rights of the 80,000 people currently under
institutional care in Taiwan. The wages of 24,000 institutional care service
workers will be driven down,” he said.
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