FACULTY leaders of the UST College of Nursing have urged Philippine Regulation Commission chair Leonor Tripon-Rosero to resign for for allowing the oath-taking of some passers of the controversial June exam despite a court restraining order.
“The PRC commissioners led by Rosero should resign for mishandling the leakage issue,” Faculty Association of the College of Nursing (Facon) president Rene Tadle told the Varsitarian. “Rosero circumvented the law by allowing the oath-taking, when in fact she knew there was a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO).”
Facon, together with the Samahan ng Binuklod na Student Nurses and the League of Concrned Nurses, petitioned the Supreme Court last Aug. 17 to stop the oath-taking which had been originally scheduled for Aug. 22.
But Rosero signed a memorandum allowing the more than 17,000 passers to take their oaths as early as Aug. 17. The Supreme Order came too late to stop the oath-taking of some passers.
Meanwhile, a few days after President Macapagal-Arroyo rejected calls for retake, Malacañang said that it was in favor of selective retake and is just waiting for the result of the investigation of the National Bureau of Investigation.
“Only in those places where cheating has been proven would there be exams again,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said in a press conference last Aug. 29.
The change of heart by the Malacañang maybe gratifying to those seeking a retake of the scandal-tainted exam, but it also showed that the government still has no solution to the problem, faculty leaders said.
“Mrs. Arroyo’s comments were rather premature,” Tadle said. “Up until now, Malacañang is still not sure what position to take.”
But, Renato Aquino, president of the Alliance of New Nurses, agreed with the President’s comments. “We, the more than 17,000 passers, and our families and friends are very happy to know that the President is with us,” he said.
Tadle, who said he had been receiving hate mails, said UST would continue to press for a retake.
“We understand that many of those who passed did so without benefiting from the leak,” Tadle said. “But they have to understand that we are just trying to protect the integrity of the nursing profession as a whole.
Meanwhile, the NBI has recommended that charges be filed against two Board of Nursing members, Anesia Dionesio and Virginia Madela, allegedly the sources of the leak.
“Aside from determining the sources of the leakage, we will also find out who benefited from it,” Elfren Meneses Jr., chief of the NBI Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division told the press.
However, Tadle said that the report of the NBI “just repeated the PRC’s findings stating that the manuscript containing the answers to the exams were traced to the two members.”
The NBI also said it would summon the 22 deans of nursing schools who attended a review class in a mall cinema in which a PowerPoint presentation containing the answers in the exams was allegedly flashed by George Cordero, owner of the Inress Review Center. I. L. D. L.
