Zamboanga Nurses Decry Order For New Board Exam

ZAMBOANGA CITY (Uly Israel / 01 Oct) - More than 500 local nurses, who passed the licensure examination, have protested President Gloria Arroyo's order for a retake of the controversial June nursing board examination, which had been tainted by allegations of cheating and fraud.

The nurses branded Arroyo’s order as “unfair and unjustified,” but at the same time were appealing to the President to reconsider her decision for the retake of the licensure examination.
Celeste Castillo, who was 5th placer in the board examination, said: “It is very frustrating and very unfair considering the hard work and the sacrifices the examiners made to pass the licensure exam only to be ordered to retake”.

“We have worked so hard for this license, they cannot take it away from us just like that,” she told the Mindanao Examiner.

Sixto Casano, who graduated at the Western Mindanao State University (WMSU) here, said the President should not give in to pressure by groups and politicians who were calling for the retake of the nurses’ examination.

“We are strongly against the order to retake the examination. The move of Arroyo was politicized, if ever she was pressured by international groups or by some nursing universities in Manila, we will strongly condemn whoever is behind this move,” he said.

He explained that “if we agree to the order, then it’s like an admission to the wrongdoing.”

Casano echoed the sentiments of other board passers lamenting that those behind the alleged leak of the examination results had gone unpunished and that the examinees “were taking the brunt of the effect of the misconduct of those responsible.”

“What the government should do is to go after the culprits and spare the innocent,” he said.

Some 17,000 of the 42,000 nurses who took the board examination had passed and that 369 of them were graduates of WMSU.

Casano said that deans of nursing schools here are planning to appeal the President’s order.
Many nurses in other parts of the country, who also passed the examination, had protested Arroyo’s order.

Arroyo ordered the Philippine Regulation Commission to have the nurses retake the board examination’s Test III and Test V, where the answers had been allegedly leaked to some nurses’ review centers in exchange for money. (Mindanao Examiner)