Taichung City Government

[skydive]

Hi there!
I have an unbelievable story for you;unfortunately it is true.
I need your help to give me some advice on what I should do in this situation.

I have been living and working in Taiwan as an office assistant for 5 years;the company that I work for went for the Taiwan public school bids for several county and city governments;
The various city and county governments need certified native english teachers to place them in their public schools;so what they do is they hire a recruiting and culting company to provide them with the teachers and help them do the services during the contract.

• Our services start with recruiting the teachers
• help the teachers to apply for the visa in their country
• authenticate their degrees and certificates int he Taiwan embassy in their country
• pick up the teachers from the airport,take them to the temporary hotel
• schedule the school interview
• do the apartment hunt for the teachers
• settle them down both in the school and the apartment
• when all these are done then
• we start processing the teachers' working permits,then ARC,then NHI

You can imagine how hard it is for any foreigner to get through the cultural shock : from using chopsticks to choosing the apartment and soooooo many others.

We are there with the teachers all the way.

Secondly, we provide servies for the schools :

* make sure all the paperwork related to the teacher(ANY) is done ,filed copied and mailed to whoever needs it,
* communicate with the teachers all through the contract duration,pass any small little type os message to the teacher from the school,
* help them find another teacher if their teacher runs away
* help keep records of the teachers daily attendance sheet
* help keep records of the teachers' weekly reflections and teaching observations

Thirdly we have to provide the respective city or county government with services also :

* all the paperwork related to the teachers' status in Taiwan : diploma and teacher certificate authentication, working permit,ARC,NHI
* daily attendance form,personal and sick leave records, monthly reports, quarterly reports,
* activities for the city government etc.

For all these services we are paid a service fee from the city government;the money is approved before the starting of the program and is sent to one of the main schools responsible for the program. During the contract terms, whenever the time comes, the school has to send us the money.

Now, the thing is the last contract that we had with taichung city government they have chosen "not to pay half of the money they owe us."

We are talking to the walls; nobody would listen or talk to us; when there is somebody that would talk to us they don't talk,just listen and then tell us they will get back to us.

As a foreigner I am amazed that this can really happen in a civilized country: I feel like there is nothing we can do to defend ourselves; no matter how much we are trying to talk to them, they would not listen.

imagine you work for somebody for half an year ;you have expenses : not talking about the expenses of recruiting the teachers,but also paperwork,staff that needs to take the teachers here and there when they need us,monthly meetings and trainings with all the teachers in the program, two or three big events and activities, and so many others.

There are staff in the office that are paid full time to do that job,and so close to the end ,we find out we won't get paid for it.

The company has already made all these expenses from our own pockets and now,Taichung City government chooses to forget about us : the contratc finishes this Friday : all the teachers have happily finish their contracts;all the schools have ended their 2007 school year and are ready for a new contract.

We are the only ones that are left behind, with no pay for what we did, no thanks for helping our kids learn some english, not even pay the expenses we did have with keeping the teachers in their schools for 10 months.

I keep asking myself, what kind of government would cheat and steal from their citizens' pockets like this.

If anybody has any suggestions please e-mail me;my e-mail address is international.avenue@gmail.com

Thank you for listening!