Gov’t crafting post-Covid-19 recovery plan: Bello

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said they will submit the proposal to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) next month. (File photo by Ramon FVelasquez/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

MANILA – The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is developing programs that would help workers and stakeholders once the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) crisis is over.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said they will submit the proposal to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) next month.

“We are now conceptualizing a post-Covid-19 recovery plan. Meron po kaming pinaplano at ipipresenta namin in due time sa Interagency Task Force. Ito, total approach ito. Ang unang-una namin na inaasikaso dito ay yung employment, (We are planning something that we would present in due time to the Interagency Task Force. This would be a total approach. The first thing we are doing something about is employment)” he said in an interview during the Laging Handa Briefing aired over government-run PTV-4.

Bello said they want to assure that workers are still employed after the global health crisis.

“We have to be very sure na yung ating mga employees, manggawa natin ay hindi mawalan ng trabaho (our employees, our laborers would not be out of work). In fact, we were saying that more than the issue of security of tenure is the issue of employment,” he added.

Meanwhile, Bello reported that over 230,000 formal sector workers have benefited from the Covid Adjustment Measurement Program (CAMP) amounting to over PHP1.

1 billion.

He said as of April 18, around 237,653 formal workers received the PHP5,000 cash aid.

“We are still targeting about 231,975 formal workers; the cost is about Php1,610,000. ‘Yan po ang ating binigyan ng tulong sa ilalim ng CAMP (That’s the number of workers we are helping under the CAMP),” he said.

Bello added that some 178,000 informal sector workers also received the 10-day emergency employment assistance amounting to over PHP410 million.

DOLE is targetting to provide aid to over 230,000 more informal workers which entail around PHP966,000.