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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Nurses' group wants court to punish labor chief
MANILA -- Even after nursing exam passers were allowed to take their oaths, a lawyer for a nurses' group still asked the Court of Appeals to impose sanctions on Labor Secretary Arturo Brion for not respecting its order.
Former senator Rene Saguisag, who serves as lawyer for the Alliance of New Nurses (ANN), said Brion's directive for the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) to suspend the oath taking was a mockery of the October 13 order of the CA and he should be chastised for it.
The Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) said it noted "fraud and a lot of aberrations" in the list provided by the PRC and the master list of 42,000 examinees who took the licensure exam last June.
"What were doing lately was to investigate the complaints of 20 examinees who said there were problems in the computation of their grades and we found out that indeed there were problems in the computation of their grades," Brion told reporters.
In a motion to cite Brion for contempt, Saguisag said, "Secretary Brion should have had the courtesy of coursing his position through the solicitor general. Even were he Presiding Justice here, he could trivialize a division's decision. He cannot just write here without entering his appearance just because he used to be here. That is overweening cavalier presumption."
Brion's order stayed the swearing in of more than 17,000 new nurses last October 17 despite the October 13 order of the CA.
In the ruling, the CA junked the petition for injunction filed by University of Sto. Tomas (UST) College of Nursing Faculty Association president Rene Luis Tadle and several others seeking to enjoin the PRC and Board of Nursing from proceeding with the oath taking of the national licensure examination passers due to the leakage.
In that ruling, the CA gave the go-signal for the oath taking of those who originally passed the exam.
Saguisag said Brion should have consulted Solicitor General Antonio Eduardo Nachura first before making such a decision.
But in a letter to the CA, Brion asked the appellate court to hold conciliatory talks among the concerned parties to resolve the controversy involving the test leakage.
Brion, a former CA justice before his appointment as head of the labor department, said the mediation process has proven successful in resolving cases while he was still a CA justice.
During the mediation, officials of the PRC, Board of Nursing, Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), and other parties involved agreed to proceed with the oath taking while the probe on those who should be penalized for the leakage would continue.
Last October 27, the PRC pushed through with the oath taking of those who passed the June exams.
On the perusal of the list of examinees and that of the PRC, Brion said aside from the 20 examinees "we are looking into the computation of the grades of other examinees. We have been provided by the PRC with the master list, all 42,000 examinees, their subjects with their grades. We are now in the process of comparing it with the list that the PRC gave us, the retake list and the deemed passed list. We are comparing those."
With the three lists showing discrepancies, Brion said, "This is the reason why we've been very hesitant to endorse the oath-taking at this point."
Lily Pineda, Brion's chief of staff, said a review of the three lists (master list, retakers and deemed pass lists) provided by the PRC showed discrepancies.
"In our review of two documents, we found out that figures in list 2 for a particular examinee, the grades for (tests) 1, 2, 3, 4 are different from what were the grades indicated in PRC list 1, which is the master list," Pineda said.
Pineda said the master list contains the original grades per subject of all the 42,000 examinees while the retake list is what the PRC came out with when it computed the grades following the discovery of the leak.
The third list or the deemed passed list was the list that came out after the appellate court struck down the PRC's resolution allowing the original test results recomputed.
Moreover, Brion said they hope to complete their investigation by Monday when they will submit the results to the President.
"We respect the court for what it did. We're not parties to this case so it's up to the parties to react on this. But, in the meanwhile, we are proceeding on our own," he said.
Asked if the controversy in the nursing licensure examinations could be considered a closed case, Brion said it is " far from over." He said the fact that there is a case pending at the CA, it only means that the case is expected to reach the Supreme Court (SC).
In Malacañang, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo named five of seven new acting members of the Board of Nursing (BON) vice the previous members who resigned in the wake of the leakage.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the President signed the appointments before leaving for China last week.
The new appointees are: acting chairman Carmencita Abaquin, who assumed different administrative positions at the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Nursing and who taught both in the undergraduate and graduate programs before she retired on June 24, 2006; acting members Leonila Faire; Perla Po; medical lecturer Betty Meritt; and Marco Antonio Sto. Tomas, vice president of the Association of Deans of Philippine Colleges of Nursing and president and chief executive officer of the Integrated Maternal Child Care Services and Development Inc.
Ermita said they are still waiting for the recommendations of the PRC and Dole on two more BON members.
The BON's tasks include preparing the contents of the nursing board exams.
Ermita said the appointments are important, especially with the next set of nursing licensure examinations due in December. (ECV/MSN/JMR/Sunnex)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Manila.
(November 1, 2006 issue)
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