The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) will hire 50,000 contact tracers in July to help boost the country’s Covid-19 testing, Palace spokesman Harry Roque said Thursday.
Roque previously said the government was looking into hiring jeepney drivers who were left jobless by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The spokesman also assured the public of the security of user data in StaySafe.ph, the government’s online contact tracing platform, citing the developer’s agreements with the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Emerging Infectious Diseases which ensured adherence to “relevant cybersecurity, data privacy and confidentiality laws.”
The platform was endorsed by Task Force Covid-19 chief implementer Carlito Galvez Jr. for use by local government units as the country aims to boost mass testing.
The memorandum of agreement was signed between the Department of Health (DOH) and StaySafe.ph app developer Multisys Technologies Corp., covering the source code, all data, data ownership, and intellectual property.
“Lahat po ng mga nirereklamo ng mga kritiko ng StaySafe.ph, lahat po iyan ay binigyan ng atensiyon ng IATF at ang gobyerno po ang magmamay-ari ng data,” Roque said.
Multisys was given 30 days to transfer the data gathered through the app to DOH’s “Covid-Kaya” system. John Ezekiel J. Hirro