MANILA – A widely-shared Facebook post contains a map that claims to show the Philippines’ high-speed rail system.
But the Department of Transportation said the country does not have a high-speed rail network.
A reverse image search found the map was created by a blogger who said it was a “complete work of fiction.”
The map in the widely-shared Facebook post shows a series of lines running up and down the Southeast Asian archipelago.
The post said: “President Duterte is doing his best to improve Philippine transport system in the Philippines.”
It has been shared over 7,000 times by Facebook groups and pages with combined followers of nearly 630,000. Most of these Facebook accounts support Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
A reverse image search showed that the picture was posted online in February 2014.
The blog entry describes the image as “an imaginary map” of a high-speed network that spans the Philippines.
The blogger, Michael Gonzalez, told AFP: “Yes, that’s my blog and I made that map, a complete work of fiction.”
“I never shared my work anywhere claiming that it was an actual project, so someone at some point must have taken it and shared it for malicious purposes,” he added.
Transportation undersecretary Timothy Batan said the country does not have a high-speed rail system yet but there are plans to eventually have one.
“There are plans to eventually build a High Speed Rail (HSR) system and the current pipeline of projects is being designed for eventual upgrading to HSR,” he said.
He also showed the correct image of the planned rail system for the Philippines. (Agence France Presse)
