MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Labor and Employment on Tuesday flagged a fake list of at least 31 companies in Metro Manila that have supposedly been granted government financial assistance to private workers affected by the Luzon-wide lockdown until April 12.
Under the lump-sum assistance called the COVID-19 Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP), which took effect on March 21, P5,000 is directly issued to the payrolls of displaced workers in affected companies who successfully applied to the program.
RELATED: Gov't offers one-time P5,000 assistance to displaced private workers | P5,000 aid during lockdown covers contractual, on-probation private workers, says DOLE
“FAKE NEWS ALERT: There’s a circulating Facebook post with a list of companies already given P5,000 DOLE CAMP assistance in Metro Manila.,” DOLE-National Capital Region said in Filipino in a post onTuesday, saying it as not made any such announcement.
The regional DOLE office said that it will release an official list of CAMP beneficiaries as soon as possible.
“Spreading false information is not helping. Always remember your trusted source,” it advised.
All DOLE-NCR announcements are posted on their official Facebook page and website.
In a related development, labor group Defend Jobs Philippines said it hopes DOLE will be able to process CAMP applications faster after Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said earlier Tuesday that workers can apply for CAMP assistance directly at the labor department. The option to do so is for workers whose employers did not apply for assistance.
Although it welcomed the development, the labor group also said "DOLE must first clarify the vague requirements and process and at the same time improve its own internal mechanisms and procedures in executing CAMP."
"With the loads of pending applications and numbers of employers who got rejected by DOLE, we hope that today’s pronouncement of Bello will not give false hopes to the millions of workers who are relying on this cash assistance program," said Thadeus Ifurung, Defend Jobs Philippines spokesperson.