ECC stops payment for COVID-19 afflicted workers – labor group

MANILA, Philippines — Due to budgetary constraints, the Employees Compensation Commission (ECC) has stopped compensating workers who acquired the coronavirus disease at work, a labor leader said yesterday.

Julius Cainglet, Federation of Free Workers (FFW) vice president, disclosed in a virtual briefing that their members’ applications for compensation after suffering from COVID-19 were denied by the ECC.

“Early September last year, ECC stopped releasing compensation when about 300 of our members got the infection in March,” Cainglet said.

He claimed that these workers spent over half a million pesos for their treatment, but were unable to get financial help from the ECC.

“Their applications were turned down and told that the ECC has no funds,” he said. “Workers are entitled to compensation from ECC because they are paying their contributions with the Social Security System (SSS).”

ECC executive director Stella Banawis confirmed that applications for EC cash assistance were suspended because of lack of funds only in September.

“But we have continued to process all applications received and still releasing checks till now,” said Banawis, stressing that the ECC already sought supplemental budget for the purpose.

She explained that the ECC’s budget for 2020 was not meant to cover the big volume of benefit claims from those afflicted with COVID-19, since the pandemic was an unforeseen event.

Still, Cainglet said the P10,000 assistance given by the ECC to workers who got infected with COVID-19 is insufficient in aiding workers faced with the high cost of medical treatment.

For this reason, FFW president Sonny Matula said their group is pushing for the declaration of COVID-19 as an occupational illness to make it easier to claim compensation from the ECC.

“There would be no more burden for workers to prove that they acquired the infection at work and could avail of the ECC benefits easier,” he said.

The FFW already requested the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to support the proposal.

Matula stressed that there is no need for an enactment of a new law to do this, only a resolution by the ECC declaring COVID-19 as an occupational illness.

Banawis noted that qualified beneficiaries still have three years to apply for compensation even if COVID-19 is not yet declared an occupational disease.

Yesterday, the Department of Health (DOH) reported the country’s COVID-19 caseload as having reached 482,083, with the addition of 1,353 new cases nationwide.

The DOH said 93.1 percent or 449,052 of these patients have already recuperated from the infection, including 360 new recoveries.

The active cases stand at 23,675 or 4.9 percent of the total. The bulk or 90.7 percent of these active cases are mild and asymptomatic, the DOH said.

Rizal province posted the biggest number of new cases with 63, followed by Laguna with 62, and Marikina City with 60. With 58 new cases, Quezon City ranked fourth in the list, followed by Davao City with 54.

There were also nine new COVID-19 deaths, bringing to 9,356 the death toll from the pandemic. It accounts for 1.94 percent of the total caseload.