Taipei, Nov. 14 (CNA) Taiwan's labor ministry said Thursday that it had officially launched a pilot program for dispatching foreign care workers to multiple households in one day, with the migrant caregivers potentially working up to 14 hours in a 24-hour period.

Under the new "Pilot Program for Diversified Companion Care Services" devised by the Ministry of Labor (MOL), commercial and nonprofit organizations alike will be allowed to employ foreign care workers and dispatch them to multiple residences in a single day for a minimum of four hours at a time, according to the MOL.

Under current rules, foreign care workers are generally employed on a live-in basis, residing with families who hire them to provide full-time care to someone in that household.

The pilot program launched Thursday is aimed at offering greater flexibility for self-funded care, the ministry said.

"Applicants for the program must meet certain criteria, such as having a disability certificate, proof of a severe illness, post-surgery medical records, or being assessed as needing long-term care at levels 2 to 8," said Su Yu-kuo (蘇裕國), head of the Cross-border Workforce Management Division of the MOL's Workforce Development Agency (WDA).

"The services provided may include providing basic daily care, accompanying them when going out, accompanying them to receive medical treatment, offering safe companionship, and so on," the official said.

Su said the minimum caregiving time for any migrant worker dispatched to a residence will be four hours, and if it is a 24-hour request, this "must include 10 hours of rest."

Despite announcing the launch of the program, however, the MOL has not decided how much a household will pay for the labor of migrant care workers under the new plan, nor provided any information on how much the care workers could earn.

"The service charges will be determined after [the potential commercial or nonprofit organizations] submit their plans, and a selection committee will evaluate them," Su said, adding that the ministry will hold a briefing session with potential caregiver-dispatching organizations on Friday.

Su said that the ministry expects at least three commercial or nonprofit organizations in different regions of the country will each hire around 10 foreign care workers in the first year of the program.

In August, the ministry's program was criticized by lawmakers and NGOs as potentially undermining Taiwan's domestic workforce, given that foreign migrant workers can legally be paid less than Taiwanese workers.

The current monthly salary for live-in migrant caregivers and domestic helpers is NT$20,000 (US$613), nearly a third lower than the current minimum wage of NT$27,470 guaranteed to Taiwanese workers under the Labor Standards Act.

As of the end of June, there were 241,532 foreign workers employed in caregiving or other social welfare functions, more than three-quarters of whom (77.2 percent) were from Indonesia, according to MOL figures.