A chatbot on the popular messaging app LINE is partly behind Taiwan’s success in getting over 90% of Taiwan’s migrant workers a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s according to officials from the labor ministry, who are behind the multilingual “1955 E-Line” chatbot scheme.
Labor Ministry official Tsai Meng-liang told Radio Taiwan International on Monday that the labor ministry used the chatbot to provide a step-by-step guide to registering for vaccination against COVID-19. He says the bot’s success is part of the reason over 90% of migrant workers have had a first dose, compared with around 80% of Taiwan’s population overall.
Tsai says that over 120,000 workers use the chatbot. He says the bot is free and open for use by all migrant workers, regardless of their legal status in Taiwan.
The chatbot provides information on COVID-19 policies, workers’ rights and workplace safety in Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and English.
Tsai says the ministry has also used the chatbot to aid government efforts to stop African swine fever from entering Taiwan through contaminated meat products.
Workers can also use the chatbot to connect to 1955, the labor ministry’s dedicated hotline, to report illegal behavior by employers.