Why did they rush nurses’ oath-taking?

Passers of the June nursing board exam must thank their lucky stars. They’ve obtained assurance from President Gloria Arroyo no less that they need not retake two test portions marred by leak of questions. Too, official nursing licensers, after initially concealing the cheating and so made things worse, are now talking of punishing two examiners who mishandled their notes. Why, about a third of the 17,000 or so passers also have taken their nursing oath, before the Appeals Court halted the rest. So there’s just this last kink left that no presidential assurance or finger pointing or specialist title can fix: who will trust the passers enough to hire them?

Trust is that priceless commodity the exam fraud broke. No viable alternative than an exam retake has been presented to repair the damage. All this talk about encoding questionnaires on computers from now on, secured not only by secret passwords but also biometrics of examiners, is good only for future tests. The problem is that all the June passers have been tainted by the leakage. Many of them cannot land positions even only as hospital volunteers to spice up experience entries in curriculum vitae.

It truly is unfair to make those who passed the exam fair and square retake it. As Ms Arroyo said, it’s like punishing persons who committed no wrongdoing. But as has been pointed out, the extent of the leak no longer can be determined. Worse, regulators and investigators messed things up.

To recollect, whistleblowers at first pointed to six undergrad and two review schools in Baguio City. The Professional Regulation Commission’s first instinct was to belie them instead of fully investigating. But then, more examinees, this time in Manila, who were tipped off on all the questions in psychiatric and surgical nursing, gave info about open cheating in a public theater. They asserted that the president of the Phil. Nursing Association himself presented the questions to examinees from a nursing school and a review center that he happens to own. Still another admission was that a dozen deans likewise got advance copies of the questions and promptly disseminated these to students. The clincher was that two examinees had been feted to a Swiss holiday by the PNA president.

Instead of simply declaring no exam retake and absolving the PRC, what is needed here is a full investigation of the leakage and its attendant events. For, it appears that the scam was but the result of many other faults in nursing licensure.

The PRC may have handled other licensing exams well and slipped only in nursing, but it still must explain its knee-jerk denial of the exposé. Such behavior reveals how unprofessional the regulators of professions can be when trying to keep government jobs – that supposedly overwork yet underpay in the first place. Another mystery was why the PRC rushed the oath-takings, when it knew that a petition was pending at the Court of Appeals to nullify the exam results. Perhaps it has to do with quick bucks. Exam passers by law may take their oath before any government officer. But the PRC has made a racket out of charging each oath-taker P600 and a guest P400 for a "grand affair" at a simple venue. Hmm, 17000 passers multiplied by P1,000 equals a quick – but unexplained – P17 million. And that’s after collecting P42 for two documentary stamps worth only P15 apiece, to be attached on exam applications. At P12 overprice for each of the 42,000 nursing examinees, times two exams per year, someone is making another un-audited P504,000 per year.

The Board of Nursing that prepares the exams also has explaining to do. Two of its members reportedly went to a nursing conference this year in Switzerland on stipend of the PNA head. That is blatant bribery in the form of accepting illicit expensive gifts. The same two members happened to have somehow misplaced the handwritten exam questions they wrote, and these found their way to the main benefactor in the PNA and to sidelines in Baguio.

The PNA president, as owner of a school and a review center, had a conflict of interest in dealing with the examiners. But he not only went on and gifted them with European junkets, but also shared the leaks with educators of low scruples. Their common aim obviously was to push up the grades of their graduates to entice more enrollees. That sin, coupled with the examiners’ greed and PRC rackets, only led to the inevitable leak.

Punishment of the nursing leaders for exam fraud would help restore trust in the nursing licensing system. That’s basic law enforcement. Still, the passers would help themselves by retaking the tests in psychiatric and surgical nursing. And government must advance the cost of administering the exam, including the transportation, board and lodging of examinees from remote areas. Reimbursements can be charged against the forfeited pay and benefits of the PRC officials and examiners who are guilty.

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What I’ve been forecasting about the Piatco case is about to happen. As reported yesterday, the company is poised to take over NAIA Terminal-3 tomorrow in view of a ruling by Singapore arbitrators for government expropriators to return it. This is on top of a Pasay court order for the government to pay Piatco P3 billion in initial "just compensation" for taking over the facility in Dec. 2004.

This all means that Piatco will get control of the terminal that sits on government land, and receive P3 billion to boot, which it can use to finagle the rest of the P30 billion it claims to have spent on construction. And yet, all this time, the Supreme Court deems Piatco’s build-operate contract void from the start for violating bidding and banking laws.

All this resulted from the expropriation, which automatically gave Piatco a right to just compensation – although the SC ruling means that it should never be entitled to recompense for crookedness. Also, government erred in recognizing the jurisdiction of the Singapore arbitration that has the audacity to question SC rulings.

Expect the authorities to bow to a final Singapore ruling to pay Piatco the full P30 billion. Fraport, Piatco’s German partner, could get another P22 billion from US arbiters. And Takenaka Corp. will collect P5.2 billion in overdue fees for actual civil works. Officials will pass these off to taxpayers.

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