Tom offers to facilitate meeting with president; 'Nurses' seek dialogue with GMA

Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña has once again offered to aid the June 2006 Cebuano Nursing Board passers. This time he did not offer financial assistance, but said he would facilitate an audience with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Osmeña said, he is willing to facilitate a discussion between the Cebu nurses and President Arroyo, who will be in the city today.

"If they want to meet, I will help facilitate," Osmeña said yesterday.

The mayor also refused to make a stand on the issue saying that it is beyond his competence.

"I am not in the position to make an intelligent position on the matter. It's beyond my competence. I certainly feel the pain... If I were simply to make a decision based on what is popular, it should be no retake," Osmeña said.

During the first rally staged in Cebu by the board passers weeks ago, Osmeña already said the city is willing to offer financial assistance.

He offered to use part of the city's calamity fund to assist those who will retake the exams. Aside from this, Osmeña plans to give P5,000 as a subsidy to each exam taker, who is a registered voter in the city.

The other day, the Cebu nurses returned to Fuente Osmeña and staged another rally against announcements that they will all have to retake the exam.

About 3,300 took the examinations here and only 1,723 passed the test. Overall there were 42,000 who took the June 2006 Nursing Licensure Exam and only 17,000 passed.

Malacañang is now waiting for the Court of Appeals to render its decision on the petition filed against the Professional Regulation Commission and the Board of Nursing for the two agencies to invalidate the oath of those that passed the board exams.

The presidents of the University of Santo Tomas Nursing Faculty Association, League of Concerned Nurses and Binuklod na Samahan ng mga Student Nurses filed the case.

The appellate court has issued a 60-day temporary restraining order on the case.

Of the 1,723 board passers here in Cebu, 1,300 have taken their oath but still are not able to practice the profession owing to TRO.

The board passers have formally intervened in the petition for prohibition, saying they have legal interest in the outcome of the petition. Their comment-in-intervention was formally filed with the Court of Appeals on September 13.

In their official intervention document, the Cebu nurses oppose the contention of the Manila-based nursing associations. They say that the PRC and the Board of Nursing did not act in excess of jurisdiction nor did they commit grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack of jurisdiction when they admitted those who passed the recomputed results of test five of the exams.

They also said that examinees are innocent victims of the whole controversy and by not allowing them to practice the profession, despite having passed the licensure examinations, is tantamount to depriving them of their right to property without due process of law.

They further contended that those who passed the board exams here in the Philippines are still required to pass the NCLEX and CGFNS examinations, among others, before being allowed to practice nursing in other countries.

Meanwhile, the Professional Regulation Commission-7 yesterday announced it supports the appeal of the nurses here in Cebu for a "no retake" of the controversial examination.

PRC-7 director Dan Malayan underscored that the nurses here in Cebu did not benefit from the alleged leakage in examination answers.

Malayan said that the PRC-7 can attest that there was indeed no leakage when the board exam was conducted here in Cebu City last June 11 and 12.

Malayan said that the PRC employees, who supervised the conduct of the board exam last June, did not report to him any anomaly that they observed.

Aside from this, Malayan also said that policemen were deployed during the exams in Cebu not only to maintain peace and order, but also to help monitor the conduct of those who took the test.