When will the nursing exam results come out?

For tonight's special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we bring you Cebu's numero uno salesman, Mr. Joel Mari Yu of the Cebu Investment Promotion Center (CIPC) who will give our foreign and domestic visitors and hopefully the ASEAN delegates what Cebu has to offer in terms of investments.

Actually, we taped this show last December in preparation for the 12th ASEAN Leader's Summit but no one ever predicted that the summit would be postponed. With the ASEAN Summit reeling off this week, we're bringing you a show about Cebu, which I'm sure our foreign guests would be interested to learn. I'm equally sure that our local folk would learn a lot from it. So watch this very interesting show tonight on SkyCable's channel 15 at 8:00pm.

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No doubt all eyes would be focused in Cebu this week as we finally host the 12th ASEAN Leaders' Summit. Surely by now, all those nitty-gritty details that we needed to attend to were already fixed or done with. Now is the time to put up our smiling happy faces that Filipinos are world famous for. What lesser mortals like us need to do so that our hosting of the ASEAN Summit would be successful is to ensure that our streets are clean. If we can delay buying something in the store, you would be helping by not adding to our traffic problems.

This is only a week of sacrifice on our part as proud Cebuanos. Next week after the ASEAN Summit is through, we can look forward to that festive fluvial parade and the solemn procession to pay homage to the Señor Sto. Niño. Then on Sunday, a rousing merriment to celebrate the Fiesta of Cebu. Pit Senyor!

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It's been 37 days since the second batch of Nursing graduates took the Nursing Licensure exams and the anxious examinees and their parents are somehow kept in the dark as to why the results of this nursing exams have not yet been released. There is no question that the exams for the first batch last June was mired in that cheating scandal and the ripple effects of that national controversy continues to plague the nation today. This is the problem of the Filipinos; we just can't let go of our ugly past! We go on bitching and murmuring about what happened long after the issue has gone.

With the second nursing licensure exam held last December 2 and 3, I thought that the Professional Regulations Commission (PRC) or the Nursing Board would already have straightened their acts and fixed whatever problems they had with the embarrassing scandal they faced. Well apparently our problems are not yet over because they haven't released the results of the nursing exams until today. What's up guys?

Because the PRC hasn't released anything, not even a whimper about what's going on, rumors have been going around that perhaps another cheating was uncovered or that because of the national shame they caused, the Nursing Board made the exams last December more difficult and thus only a few passed the exams. Personally, I don't believe that some idiot would try to pull another cheating stunt but that other rumor that the exams were made more difficult could very well be true. This bring us to the question... why punish the new examinees by making the exams harder because a cheating scam was exposed? Whatever it is, I just hope that none of these stories swirling around are true.

So before we get more ugly rumors, most of which are based on someone's wild imagination, we exhort the PRC to give us any information as to when they would release the results of the nursing licensure exams held last December. Right now everyone is kept in dark... and the PRC's silence is deafening!

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Still on Nursing, we just read The Freeman report that Japan whose majority population is 65 years or above has finally accepted its first batch of Filipino nurses. Indeed, Pinoy nurses are a welcome sight to Japan where its young people prefer to take on other jobs, just like their western counterparts. Too few young Japanese bother to take care of their parents, hence there is a huge need for nurses and caregivers to work in Japan.

Actually this was the deal hatched last year between Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA). But better than sending Filipino nurses or caregivers to Japan is the plan by the Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) to build townships or communities for the Japanese elderly folk who can move to the Philippines and be taken cared by the same Filipino nurses and caregivers. Hopefully, the PRA would be as successful in this endeavor like Thailand and Indonesia.

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For email responses to this article, write to vsbobita@mozcom.com. Bobit's columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com