5 named to Board of Nursing

First posted 12:53pm (Mla time) Oct 31, 2006
By Lira Dalangin-Fernandez
INQ7.net


(2ND UPDATE) PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has approved the appointments of five of the seven new members of the Board of Nursing (BON), Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said Tuesday.
Appointed were Carmencita Abaquin as acting chairman and Leonila Faire, Betty Meritt, Perla Po, and Marco Antonio Sto. Tomas as acting members.

They replaced Eufemia Octaviano, Remedios Fernandez, Letty Kuan, Estelita Galutira, Anesia Dionisio, and Virginia Madeja who resigned following the discovery of a leakage in the June 2006 nursing licensure examinations.

One position at the BON had been vacant before the scandal broke. The PRC and Department of Labor and Employment have yet to submit their recommendations.

Dionisio and Madeja were charged with allegedly violating the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) Modernization Act.

Among the BON’s tasks is to prepare the contents of the nursing board exam, the second of which would be held on December 2 and 3.

Ermita had said that Malacañang wanted a repeat of the June licensure test before December following a ruling by the Court of Appeals which had ordered 1,687 examinees to retake portions of the test that were discovered to have been leaked.

These examinees were those who had passed after the PRC recomputed the test scores following leak.

Ermita said the number of those who could retake the exams could still rise depending on the final report of the National Bureau of Investigation, which was investigating the list of students who had enrolled in the final review at Gapuz, Inress, and Pentagon Centers -- where the leakage had been traced.