The Death of Food Delivery Workers: Seeing a Third World Scene in Taiwan

 The Death of Food Delivery Workers: Seeing a Third World Scene in Taiwan

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

October 16, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

In five days, three fatal traffic accidents took the lives of two food delivery workers and one pedestrian, drawing attention to the labor safety of this emerging industry. It also elicited discussions about the relationship between the food delivery workers and the food delivery platforms, including the issue of the latter “masquerading their employees as contract workers.” It is always the case that the government will wait until fatalities occur to pay attention to the fact that food delivery workers criss-crossing the streets are in the majority not covered by labor insurance, so much so that when they are killed in a traffic accident, they no compensation is provided, and then the government becomes busy reviewing the loopholes. More seriously, from the fatal accidents involving food delivery workers, Taiwan's traffic civilization is retrogressing, looking as if it were a chaotic scene of the third world.

The two delivery workers were one 29 year-old and the other 20, one of whom started to work only two days ago. The food delivery platforms where they worked, Foodpanda, a German firm, and Uber Eats, a US firm, are both foreign-operated enterprises with quite some backround, occupying the top two places in market share of Taiwan’s food delivery. However, the Labor Ministry and the Economics Ministry suprisingly have no clear idea with regard to the relationship between these food delivery platforms and their food delivery workers; otherwise, it must have been the case that the competent agencies deliberately closed one eye.

That the country’s laws and regulations, as well as management, could not catch up with the pace of the development of various industries is exposed under the sunlight in this case. Although food delivery platforms are an emerging industry, they cannot be called high-tech, but a service industry using intensive labor. However, the government's management, nevertheless, has shown no discipline. The Economics Ministry indicates an attitude that the matter does not concern the Ministry when trouble occurs. How do we differ from third world countries with such a loose government?

Tsai Ing-wen has appointed three ministers to head the Ministry of Communications and Transportation; all these ministers are interested in is how to increase construction projects in the area of transportation, and have never attempted to upgrade safety from issues such as road design, improvement, traffic signals or the right to use the road; this is precisely the principal reason why our traffic civilization is difficult to be elevated. In over three years in the past, the Tsai government has endlessly been engaged in constructing light rail, injecting scores of billions of funds into railroad underground projects, and talked loquaciously about extending the High-Speed Rail southward, but has never referred to breaking through traffic bottlenecks, improving perilous road sections or repairing and maintaining bridges.

The death of food delivery workers allowed us to witness the scenes of “the one country, two systems” of Taiwan's laws and regulations, and witness the speeding and fighting for the right of road on streets, disregarding others. These are the scenes of third world countries, which nevertheless, have become common sights on the streets of Taiwan.

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