Between jobs

My first company stopped my employment early because they were closing down one of their branches and letting some staff go. I stopped working on the 30th of November. Before I finished they said they would give us a month to find a new job and they wouldn’t stop our contract so we could still be legally in Taiwan. Later they changed their mind and said we would have to pay insurance. I was working on a salary of 55 000 NT a month and they calculated that I should pay 6106 NT for insurance in a month (what I pay plus what the company pays). I thought it was too high and I asked some other people and they thought so too, but I didn’t know the right people to ask so I paid this for the month of December. I couldn’t find a job I liked until the end of December and the second school is now applying for a new ARC for me, but it will take a couple of weeks to process (today is 12th Jan). The HR guy at the first company told me that I must also pay for insurance for the month of January up until the day my new contract begins or he will cancel my contract and I will be illegal. Is this right?
Must I pay insurance? I know I have to pay Health and Labour insurance. Is there any other insurance I pay? I ask this because this week I called both offices of labour and health insurance. The amount I was paying Health was fine and I learnt my ARC was still OK. (my ARC is actually good until beginning of April when my contract was originally made). But when I called the Labour Insurance office they told me I should be paying less than what I had been per month and that my labour insurance had been terminated the first week of December. I called the office a couple of times to reconfirm because when I confronted the HR guy he said he’d never stopped it. So I don’t know who’s made a mistake, but I’m sitting in the middle. I believe my contract and ARC are still fine, but the HR guy is wanting insurance money for this month. What can I do?
And the amount is too high by what I calculated even if they didn’t stop my Labour insurance.

Call his bluff. For that amount of money you could get a trip to HK anyway!

I also would stop paying. You should be able to get an visa extension now that your application is in. Or you can take a nice trip to (anywhere but HK) to get a new visa. Take your working permit papers with you and have some fun.

Even if your old employer notifies CLA that your contract has been terminated right now, it’ll still be at least two weeks before you’d have to leave. If the authorities take their time processing the cancellation then it could be even longer. Once your new work permit application has been submitted to the CLA then you should be able to get enough of an extension to wait for the new work permit no problem. If as your new employer says, the application is already in to CLA then you should be fine. In any case, if you can get your work permit granted before your deadline to leave then you can amend your ARC without needing to leave.

Is the two weeks 10 working days, or 14 working days?

14 calendar days.

14 calendar days.[/quote]

If you ask, they might give you longer. My situation was a bit different - I left anyway before the notice to leave arrived. I came back a week or so later expecting a 30-day visa exempt entry but couldn’t get one because my status (or newly lack thereof) hadn’t been updated.

It was the FAP in those days and I went to see them the next day. They were quite happy to extend as much as I needed in order to organise my affairs. She cancelled the re-entry permit (with a stamp) and put a date of cancellation on the reverse of the ARC. She said she wouldn’t “clip the corner” of it - odd really. Anyone just looking at the front of it would still see the original expiry date and think its still valid. It was a 3 year ARC with 2 years still to run. Although I felt I was a deserving case - really I was “entitled” to 30 days, I got the feeling that she wasn’t interested in the fact I’d already left and come back and would have done it for anyone. Joked about “we’re really not so keen to push people out”.

No questions on exit - just the usual “exit” stamp. Return some weeks later and a visa-exempt entry was given. The officer just asked “no longer living here?”.

Actually I only needed a week. Can’t remember what she did now - think she extended my stay until the end of the following month. I had no other job lined up or supporting paperwork, except a confirmed onward ticket to London which she wasn’t interested in anyway.

Maybe someone else has a more recent experience under the new regime.