A news card purporting to be from a legitimate news outlet is making the rounds on Facebook claiming that Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Rolando “Klarex” Uy warned that donation trucks from Davao City to Cebu City could be transporting illegal drugs. This is fake.
A reader submitted the post to VERA Files’ Messenger Misinformation Tipline for fact checking. Uploaded on Oct. 12, the post carried a graphic of a supposed Inquirer.net headline which read:
“Mayor Klarex warns: Cebu-bound Davao trucks may be carrying drugs from Duterte’s network!”
There is no such statement from Uy linking the alleged donation trucks with illegal drugs to detained former president Rodrigo Duterte and now Davao City mayor.
Neither did Inquirer.net publish a story about Uy making the statement, based on results of Google’s Advanced Search.
The Office of the City Mayor of Cagayan De Oro debunked the fake headline on Oct. 13. Uy said in Cebuano that he has not issued a statement on any local or national issue.
The fake headline circulated amid disaster relief efforts in the Visayas and Mindanao, as well as reports of alleged corruption in Cagayan De Oro as claimed by an employee of the National Irrigation Administration in Region X, who was shot dead in Brgy. Patag, De Oro City on Oct. 11.
The Davao City Government pledged to send financial aid to Cebu on Oct. 7, after a magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck the province on Sept. 30. After Davao Oriental was hit by a magnitude 7.4 quake three days later, Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival announced on Oct. 13 that the city government would send P232,000 in cash and 34,000 water bottles to aid relief efforts.
Re-posts of the fake headline have so far garnered over 51,000 reactions, 8,500 comments and 2,300 shares.
