Bohol Island News Staff | Posted on April 18, 2020
The Department of Labor and Employment in Region 7 (DOLE-7) announced this morning that their central office has suspended the acceptance of application for financial assistance under the Covid Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP) for formal sector workers.
According to the information provided by the Information and Publication Service of DOLE, their online application has been closed effective 5:00 pm of April 15.
“The labor department has been swamped with volumes of requests that the available fund for the program amounting to P1.6 billion is very close to being depleted,” DOLE said in a statement.
Since the implementation of CAMP from March 23 to date, DOLE was able to provide the one-time P5,000 assistance to 236,412 workers from 10,663 establishments, with total cash disbursements of Php1.2 billion.
DOLE has yet to pay 85,563 more workers in the coming days.
“We seek the full understanding of employers and workers who were unable to receive the assistance. The requests simply ballooned beyond the capacity of DOLE’s resources. The situation was aggravated by the extension of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) up to 30 April,” the statement further read.
DOLE added it is working closely with other agencies, including Congress, for an immediate alternative program to help ease the burden on the greater number of workers who did not benefit from CAMP.
“Our regional operations had enormous challenges in attending to the 1.6 million CAMP applications nationwide, but we are happy to extend assistance to those who had received the cash aid.”
DOLE is now moving fast its recovery plan for workers and employers to cope up with the “new normal” after the ECQ.
“We are preparing a menu of programs that will complement national efforts to effectively address the needs of the people,” the statement concluded.
