Fact Check: Is the Meghalaya govt giving Rs 5000 as Covid Relief to every unemployed youth?

A post is being circulated on social media which claims that the CM Relief Fund is giving Rs. 5000 as COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to every unemployed youth in the state

A post, claiming that the Meghalaya ‘CM Relief Fund’ is giving Rs. 5000 as COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund to every unemployed youth in the state, is going viral on various social media sites including the Facebook-owned messenger app WhatsApp.

“The CM Relief Fund is giving out Rs. 5000/- to every unemployed youth of Meghalaya,” the viral post claims.

The post further claims that people need to send their details like name and Bank account details to a Telegram Group (name withheld) for registration to claim the relief amount.

Discarding the post as fake news, the Chief Minister’s Office asked people not to fall prey to misinformation and desist from sharing the post.

“We would like to inform that the post which is going viral in different groups is “FAKE”. Kindly refrain from sharing such posts,” the CMO Meghalaya tweeted.

Although the news of distribution Rs. 5000 as Covid Relief Fund is fake, but the number 5000 is in news for the same state as over 5,000 children under the age of 14 have tested COVID-19 positive and 17 of them died, as per the health officials in the state.

Health officials said that since the beginning of the pandemic last year, 5,101 children up to the age of 14 tested positive but 4,344 of them have recovered and 17 succumbed. The remaining are under treatment in various hospitals.

The majority of the children were infected during the past month.

On Friday, Meghalaya recorded nine fresh COVID-19 fatalities and 650 new cases pushing the death toll to 771 and the tally to 44,382.

The state now has 4,819 active COVID-19 cases, while 38,792 people have recovered from the disease, including 431 on Friday.