Coming to the Rescue:MOFA’s Emergency Assistance for Taiwanese Travelers

The service counter in the departure hall at Tao­yuan International Airport offers a leaflet on habits for ensuring safety when traveling abroad, as well as cards translating relevant Chinese into English, Japanese, Spanish and Korean. “I am from Taiwan (ROC), and do not speak your language,” one reads. “I wonder if I can have a Chinese (Mandarin) interpreter.” It continues: “If no one is available, please contact the ROC Embassy or Taiwan Mission in your country. I need their assistance.” The emergency assistance numbers of various MOFA offices abroad are also included.

When you leave the nation and arrive at a foreign airport, you receive the following text message upon deplaning: “Wishing you happy traveling.” Sent by Taiwanese telecommunications companies on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the message also provides the number for the MOFA’s emergency assistance call center.

In 2012 the MOFA developed the “Traveler Assistance Abroad Guide” smart-phone app, which brings together information about travel advisories, weather, flight information, exchange rates, and procedures for replacing passports, as well as, once again, the phone numbers of ROC diplomatic missions abroad to call in the case of emergencies. The app is available free of charge.

MOFA’s emergency call center at Taoyuan International Airport, the premier gateway to Taiwan, has a prominent location that makes it easy to find.

Emergency assistance cards, text messages, a smart-phone app—the MOFA sure seems to be covering all bases. It’s easy to know where to go for help when it’s needed.

Four years ago, Qiu Zi­hao, a student in the department of diplomacy at National Cheng­chi University, found a job in Ohio as a lifeguard. Much to his disappointment, his employer ended up laying him off. Then he lost his passport. Not knowing what to do, he suddenly recalled that he had picked up a “foreign traveler emergency assistance card” at the airport. He pulled it out and made a call to the local MOFA office for help.

At the end of 2009, Wu Shui­shang, chief of the An­kang Ward in the ­Xinyi District of Tai­pei, suffered a heart attack while vacationing in Sydney. His hotel urgently sent him to a hospital. Not competent in English, his wife called the local MOFA office to send someone to help. A staffer posted in Australia dutifully came to serve as an interpreter and made arrangements for Wu to move into a nearby apartment so the family could be spared the NT$30,000-per-day room costs at the hospital. Wu feels extremely grateful: “If not for the ROC diplomatic mission at Sydney, I may have lost my life.”

Apart from issuing visas, staffers at the airport office of the MOFA’s Bureau of Consular Affairs take turns manning the phones at the emergency call center.

Kung ­Chung-chen, director-general of the MOFA’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, says the MOFA has duties on which “the sun never sets.” He describes the BOCA as the ministry’s 7-Eleven, handling a variety of services including verifying and issuing visas and passports, and staffing the MOFA’s emergency call center.

Currently, the MOFA has 117 offices overseas in capitals and other important cities. Apart from issuing travel documents, they also serve as front-line outposts when citizens traveling abroad experience emergencies and need help.

Kung explains that as soon as they learn of an incident, these offices dispatch personnel at the earliest moment to provide on-the-scene assistance.

In 2013, these offices handled a total of 5974 emergencies involving ROC travelers or expatriates. The largest number of these cases (2634) involved stolen or lost passports. The remainder comprised auto accidents, funeral arrangements, imprisonments, incidents involving Taiwanese fishermen, and missing persons. For the diplomats who wait on call to respond to these incidents, it is impossible to know when they will occur and what they will involve.

Take nearby Singapore, for example. As the number of Taiwanese traveling there has steadily grown, so has the workload of MOFA staff posted there. Fan Huei-chun, deputy attaché of the Tai­pei Representative Office in Singapore, explains that duty officers must be on call 24/7. To ensure that no call goes unanswered, if the officer on call doesn’t pick up promptly, the call is immediately transferred to a second officer’s number.

Overseas travelers can fall into all manner of trouble, but with the help of MOFA personnel posted overseas they may be able to avert disaster.

Fan, who has been posted in Singapore for three years, personally handled a call for help two years ago. The case left a big impression on her.

“It was the New Year’s holiday, and a woman came to Singapore to visit her sister,” explains Fan. “Unexpectedly, she came down with a fever and lost consciousness.” As soon as Fan received the call, she arranged for the woman to be admitted to Singapore General Hospital. But even after many days, the doctors could not determine the cause of her illness. Not able to pay the NT$60–80,000 per day for a room in the intensive care unit, the women’s relatives hoped that a medical flight could be arranged to take the woman back to Taiwan for treatment.

Fan’s inquiries revealed that a direct medical flight to Taiwan would cost more than NT$2 million. When the woman’s family members explained that they couldn’t afford it, she arranged instead for a shorter-range medical aircraft to bring her first to Vietnam, where another flight would take her to Taiwan. Those steps brought down the cost considerably. Fan also contacted Tai­pei Veterans General Hospital to reserve a bed and called immigration and customs ahead of time, smoothing the transition to medical care in Taiwan. After the woman returned to Taiwan, it was determined that she had contracted the H1N1 influenza virus.

Last year, the Tai­pei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston assisted in the much-reported case of an ROC student named Zeng at the University of North Texas, who was involved in a traffic accident.

When the Houston office was notified, the responding officer immediately drove for five hours to reach the hospital some 300 miles away. Yet by the time she arrived, the patient was already in a terminal state, so she notified the student’s mother in Taiwan, and arranged for the hospital, out of humanitarian considerations, to allow for the family to see the student for the last time via remote video.

The family wept uncontrollably as they watched, and they asked the MOFA staffer to tell the student on her deathbed: “Mama loves you.” It deeply moved the hospital staff, who, soon after acceding to the families’ wishes, pronounced the patient brain dead.

Afterwards, the emergency call center promtly helped the victim’s family in Taiwan with acquiring visas to the United States, and the MOFA personnel in Texas assisted with making arrangements for cremation and with shipping the ashes back to Taiwan. They also helped the family file the requisite insurance papers.

Serving on the front lines in responding to accidents and other crises, MOFA personnel posted abroad dutifully perform their missions. Meanwhile, the emergency call center at Taoyuan International Airport, based as it is at the gateway to the nation, serves the role of a communications bridge between Taiwan and places overseas.

In 1998 the MOFA established an “emergency assistance center for ROC overseas travelers” under the authority of the Bureau of Consular Affairs. It was upgraded to an emergency call center in 2009 and charged with coordinating the responses of various ROC agencies that work to help citizens facing emergencies abroad.

Located by the visa counter in Terminal 1, the center has shifts of 16 employees (including deputy directors of the BOCA visa office at the airport), answering calls at all times. Visa office director Hsu Tsong-ming notes that a call coming to the center must be picked up by its staff before the third ring.

More and more calls are coming in. Last year the center received 55,765 requests for assistance. That’s an average of 4647 per month, an increase of 19.5% over the previous year.

­Hsiang Ming-teh, a deputy director, points out that after the center receives a call and records the pertinent information, it both provides the caller with the number of the nearest ROC diplomatic office and also calls that office itself to inform them of the caller’s situation and request for assistance.

The emergency call center also contacts the affected persons’ families in Taiwan and notifies case officers at the nearest MOFA office abroad, offering follow-up assis­tance if needed. If family members must fly overseas quickly, then the center helps them with obtaining ROC passports or with expediting the acquisition of visas from the relevant nation’s offices in Taiwan.

Deputy director Larry Su says that more than 60% of the 1477 incidents that the center handled last year involved stolen or lost passports. The next most common cases involved people who wanted some other form of administrative assistance, either to file missing person reports for lost relatives or to remit money held in Taiwan abroad. Incidents where ROC citizens were victims of theft, robbery or fraud were the third most common.

In recent years growing numbers of Taiwanese youth have gone abroad on working vacations. Statistics show that these travelers have their own mix of emergencies. These include death or injury in auto accidents, admission to a hospital as a result of illness, involvement in employment compensation disputes, loss of passport, and falling victim to robbery or theft. The number of young Taiwanese killed in auto accidents in Australia is particularly alarming. The main cause is that Taiwanese aren’t used to driving on the left.

“We are duty bound to provide emergency assistance.” says Kung Chung-chen. He explains that the ROC sends MOFA personnel to nations with which the ROC doesn’t enjoy full diplomatic relations. Because MOFA officers don’t enjoy full diplomatic privileges, they have to work much harder to overcome obstacles and carry out their missions. They are meticulous and hardworking, but sometimes, when citizens make requests beyond the realm of emergency assistance, their hands are tied and they can’t offer help.

In February heavy snowfall closed Tokyo’s airports, and some Taiwanese travelers were stranded. They requested that the MOFA dispatch a special flight to solve the problem. Recently, a couple was returning from traveling in Korea. The woman, seven months pregnant, slipped and fell, prompting a premature delivery. They requested that the Tai­pei Mission in Korea advance funds for NT$2.62 million in medical expenses. “These are examples of mistaken expectations about emergency assistance.” Kung explains that services such as the filing of legal charges, financial assistance, or translation unrelated to emergencies, as well provision of money for medical expenses or deposits, are not things that fall within the scope of emergency assistance.

“It’s not a matter of being coldhearted,” Kung explains. When ROC citizens encounter difficulties abroad and can’t contact their relatives in Taiwan, ROC missions abroad will lend them money for food and lodging, a one-way ticket home, and other transportation expenses. But the loan amount is capped at US$500.

“Amid a storm, an old friend comes to the rescue.” These providers of emergency assistance are like old friends who arrive to help when one is most in need. Travelers should be aware of the diplomatic constraints that the ROC faces abroad and understand the limits of what is meant by emergency assistance. But once an ROC citizen makes that call, the MOFA officers stationed overseas will do all they can to help.