Who will protect board reviewers?

The 1,067 nursing board reviewers in Baguio found out only in mid-May. Northcap Review Center, which solicited P1,500 from each one to be signed up for the June professional exam, had run away with their money. No one could take the test scheduled on June 1-2. That meant an even bigger loss: the P75,000 they each paid for the three-month review would go to waste. Northcap reportedly has since refused to talk about the case. Up to now the would-be nurses are at a loss. Fraud is a crime; they want to sue to get justice and their money back. But they don’t know whom to run after as Northcap owner or officer. The agency that is supposed to regulate review centers, the Commission on Higher Education, has no record at all of the Baguio outfit.

No less than the CHEd appeared to have set up the reviewers for duping. Because of a an earlier bigger fraud – the nursing exam leakages from three outfits also in Baguio in June 2006 – the agency was supposed to compel all the country’s 800 or so review centers to register with it by Nov. 2007. But it hemmed and hawed. In Oct., as accreditation deadline approached, the CHEd suddenly extended it to May 2008. And in Apr., after warning review centers that they risked closure if left unregistered, the CHEd postponed it a second time to Nov. this year. It was as if the agency deliberately and unreasonably was delaying its duty to oversee the industry. Thus did most review centers escape scrutiny. Only 30 dutifully secured CHEd accreditation, by tying up as required with equally accredited colleges. Fifty more were able to beat the filing deadline, and are now awaiting CHEd action on their applications. The 720-plus others – and more review centers are being set up each day to cash in on the huge number of raw graduates needing board review, somehow because of another CHEd lapse in imposing quality in college education – are still beyond CHEd’s hands.

The Northcap scam could have been prevented, though. Atty. Rebene Carrera, president of the Federation of (the only 30) Accredited Review Centers of the Philippines, says that sleazy outfits would have been weeded out had CHEd been on the ball. Himself an owner of a review center, Rebene found the agency’s registration process, issued in Nov. 2006, firm but fair. “We are legitimate, genuine educators, so we complied with the new rules at once,” he explains. Dr. William Medrano, CHEd executive director, acknowledged days after the Northcap story broke that his office could have prevented trouble. But that was far as he would go about admitting liability. Chairman Romulo Neri repeatedly had claimed in Feb. and Mar. that there would no longer be any extension of accreditation dates, so the review centers had better submit their papers. He had no coherent explanation for the subsequent flip-flop. Erstwhile economic planning secretary, Neri had been moved to the CHEd in Aug. 2007, a month before he was summoned to the Senate about his approval of the scandalous NBN-ZTE deal. During the hearing he invoked confidentiality of presidential conversations to avoid answering crucial questions. Since then he has been awaiting return to the Cabinet from the CHEd post that he considered “only temporary, hopefully only for six months.”

In Sept. 2006 President Arroyo had directed the CHEd to put all review centers under its wings. The industry previously was unregulated. No one checked the fairness of enrollment fees and other charges. Three months before, in the June 2006 nursing board, three review centers in Baguio allegedly had promised and did deliver to their reviewers leakages purchased from corrupt examiners. Northcap’s review fee of P75,000 for three months is typical in the unregulated industry. It charged reviewers in nursing P1,500 each and in midwifery P800 for exam enlistment with the Professional Regulation Commission. But the latter’s official fees are only P900 and P600, respectively.

Some of the unregistered outfits have banded together under a Review Center Association of the Philippines. A website explains that the members are genuine educators and professionals who only want to improve the industry, and so worked on the CHEd deadline extensions preparatory to a review of the rules. That may be so. But the question persists: how will the hundreds of thousands of board reviewers be protected in an unregulated industry?

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