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Claim: The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Region 5 recently published a post clarifying that Camarines Sur is not the poorest province in Bicol region. This was in response to an October 2024 Facebook post by a local radio station comparing poverty incidence among the provinces in Bicol.
Rating: FALSE
Why we fact-checked this: The issue of whether Camarines Sur is the poorest province in Bicol is currently generating significant conversation in the local media and is turning out to be a major election issue. The provincial government has threatened to sue a local radio station for supposedly posting “fake news” about Camarines Sur’s ranking in terms of poverty incidence.
On October 3, Asintado sa Radyo, a local radio station in Naga City, made a Facebook post comparing poverty incidence in Camarines Sur versus other provinces in the Bicol region and showed Camarines Sur as the poorest in the region.
In response, the Facebook page Bicol News posted a screenshot on October 8 of an article by DSWD Region 5 supposedly clarifying the issue. The caption of the Bicol News post says: “Mismo ang regional office ng DSWD na ang nagpalabas ng pahayag na hindi ang CamSur ang poorest province sa buong Bicol Region (The DSWD regional office itself issued a statement that CamSur is not the poorest province in Bicol).” The post was also labeled “breaking news.”
As of writing, the claim has garnered 1,400 reactions, 286 comments, and 94 shares. The post may confuse Camarines Sur residents about the real status of poverty incidence in the province.
The facts: Bicol News misleadingly presented an old post published by DSWD Region 5 in December 2021 as a recent response to the post published by Asintado sa Radyo.
Contrary to the claim, DSWD Region 5 has not published any recent post concerning Camarines Sur’s ranking in poverty incidence among the Bicol provinces. While the publication date of the DSWD statement cannot be seen when viewed today, a version of the post archived by Wayback Machine shows that it was originally published on December 15, 2021, and not in 2024.
The agency did not post any clarification that directly debunked Asintado’s October 2024 post.
Below is a screenshot of DSWD’s statement from Wayback Machine:
The DSWD statement was released after posts circulated in December 2021 saying that Camarines Sur is the poorest among provinces in Bicol.
The regional office clarified: “The Field Office reported only the initial result of the National Household Targeting System or Listahanan 3 Survey on the number of poor households in the Bicol Region.”
“The Listahanan dataset simply lists the number of poor households in a geographic area and is not the basis for poverty incidence ranking among the provinces,” the office added.
Outdated PSA data: On December 17, 2021, two days after DSWD Region 5’s clarification, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released the official poverty statistics for the first semester of 2021, which showed Camarines Sur recording a poverty incidence rate of 34.6%, the highest in the Bicol region at the time. This was the statistic that Asintado cited.
The 2021 full year poverty statistics, released on August 15, 2022, still showed Camarines Sur recording the highest poverty incidence rate among Bicol provinces at 29.8%.
However, more recent data from the PSA supersedes these figures. According to the 2023 full year poverty statistics released in August 2024, the province of Sorsogon ranked highest among the six Bicol provinces in terms of poverty incidence among families.
Also misleading: Asintado sa Radyo’s post was also misleading by claiming that Camarines Sur is the poorest province in Bicol.
While based on real statistics of the PSA, the post cited 2021 data and not the latest 2023 poverty statistics. (READ: FACT CHECK: CamSur is not the poorest province in Bicol as of 2023) – Rappler.com
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