PCT. SFSC Jan 2014 newsletter

P. C. T. Seamen’s / Fishermen’s Service Center ~ News Letter 2014 July

The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan Seamen’s/Fishermen’s Service Center No.2, 1F Yukang Chung 1st Rd., Chien-chen District, Kaohsiung, Taiwan Tel:886 7 8227296

Fax:886 7 8416870

Website: http://www.pctsfsc.org.tw/

Bank: CATHAY UNITED BANK, KUTING BRANCH Account No: 030501340525 Name: THE JURIDICAL PERSON OF THE PEACE SOCIAL WELFARE AND CHARITY FOUNDATION Address: NO. 149, SEC.3, ROOSEVELT RD., TAIPEI, TAIWAN R.O.C. SWT：UWCBTWTP

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P. C. T. Seamen’s / Fishermen’s Service Center ~ News Letter

2014 July

Achievement of taking care of fishermen In order to lower the frequency of fishermen’s fights, Fishermen’s Center provide a place where foreign crew can have legitimate recreations or contact their family, so their homesick and pressure from work could be relieved; Besides, fishermen would be willing to seek help from here when they start to trust the Center, 24 people had already came for consulting last year. During the service, we have found that the fishermen never fight or steal thing in the Center, occasionally there were few people drink or smoke, they all stopped after others’ persuasion.

By the end of 2013, the Fisheries Agency financially aided 10 computers and network routers, which fishermen were able to use since last December. These devices are so popular that the usage amount of the Center clearly increased: The number of the first two months of this year has an increase of 230% than same months of last year. With free WiFi and new computers which are so much faster than the old second-handed ones, the Center is more and more attractive to the fishermen now.

Since the Center began offering free Wi-Fi, even more fishermen had brought their Smartphone/tablet PC here, as they mostly surfed the social network, chatted instantly online, or watched movie/sport program broadcasting; Among them, the social network is 37% of the total usage, while video broadcasting is 27%. Based on the position of helping fishermen, we tend to provide more advanced services, thus we’d be able to help more fishermen when they’re vulnerable.

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P. C. T. Seamen’s / Fishermen’s Service Center ~ News Letter

2014 July

On foreign fishermen’s failure to be salaried Recently, our social workers had mixed feelings on a case of fishermen’s salary dispute: Two Indonesian fishermen hadn’t contact their families, since they had spent most of the time on the sea; however, after two years, they went home and realized that their families hadn’t receive their salaries. They went to ask the Indonesian agent, who later came to Taiwan to look for the ship-owner and agent for help, only to find that the Taiwan agentjust vanished. Since that even the police couldn’t solve the problem, they went back to Indonesia helplessly, as their friend, Tony, came to the Fishermen’s Center for helping them.

During the conversations, our social workers found out that many foreign fishermen tend to go work in Hong Kong or Australia, after gaining the working experience here in Taiwan, because theoverseas employment payment there is higher than Taiwan. If some agencies turn out to be fraud while we’re already no match for other countries under the regular salary standard, will there be any more foreign fishermen willing to come to work in Taiwan? Will we ever hire any decent fishermen again?

Tony explained that some Taiwanese ship-owners and agencies would use word tricks in the contract, so they could save some money; but this means is illegitimate, which only exploits fishermen’s salary in the end, and their salaries are already too low, sometimes their salaries might even be lower than their payment back in their homelands. The Fishermen’s Center sincerely hopes that the injustice could be lessened, and we’ll try our best to help the vulnerable fishermen, which would hopefully lead to the prosperity of Taiwan fisheries.

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P. C. T. Seamen’s / Fishermen’s Service Center ~ News Letter

2014 July

The Presbyterian Church In Taiwan Seamen's Fishermen's Service Center held its Director’s inauguration at 2014/5/2.

Rev. Danny B. H. Chen is the new Director.

Jesus Has Pity for the People 35 Jesus went around visiting all the towns and villages. He taught in the synagogues, preached the Good News about the Kingdom, and healed people with every kind of disease and sickness. 36 As he saw the crowds, his heart was filled with pity for them, because they were worried and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 So he said to his disciples, “The harvest is large, but there are few workers to gather it in. 38 Pray to the owner of the harvest that he will send out workers to gather in his harvest.”

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