Defiant PRC chair says Arroyo’s order improper

Rosero calls Brion, Ang intruders

By Juliet Labog-Javellana
Inquirer
Last updated 03:06am (Mla time) 10/11/2006

Published on Page A1 of the October 11, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

MALACAÑANG’S flip-flop on the controversial nursing licensure examination yesterday degenerated into a Cabinet row at a Senate hearing on the budget of the Professional Regulation Commission.

PRC Chair Leonor Tripon-Rosero attacked Labor Secretary Arturo Brion and Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) chairman Dante Ang, calling them “intruders.” The two men, who were not present at the hearing, are pushing for a retake, while Rosero has stuck to her stand against it.

Rosero also said President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s order transferring the PRC to the labor department was “improper.”

Brion later denied being a “pakialamero” (meddler), and said he would investigate the PRC’s “inaction, negligence or omission” on the leak of test questions that had marred the exam.

Ang said Rosero could not “comprehend the damage” she had done to the nursing profession, but said he was forgiving her for accusing him of doing a demolition job.

Rosero, a topnotcher of the dental board exam and Ms Arroyo’s dentist, was defiant when she talked about her differences with Malacañang on the proposed retake and the transfer of the PRC from the Office of the President to the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE).

“Up to this time, our stand is no retake. It is those people who have been intruding and doing a demolition job [on] the PRC,” she said when Senator Franklin Drilon, finance committee chair, questioned her about the scandal.

When Drilon asked her to name names, Rosero said Brion had been demanding that the PRC conduct a retake, while Ang was “saying not so good things about the PRC.”

During his confirmation hearing at the Commission on Appointments in an adjacent room, Brion said he had asked the National Bureau of Investigation to look into the claim made to the Inquirer by a nursing professor that the purported cheating also infected Tests I and II, apart from Tests III and V, of the five-part board exam held last June.

He said he had shelved his initial recommendation to Ms Arroyo to order a retake and was now “taking a fresh look” at the scandal.

Malacañang’s flip-flop on the retake hounded Brion at his confirmation hearing, where lawmakers grilled him about the nursing mess instead of his qualifications for the labor portfolio.

Responding to a question posed by Drilon, Brion said he had learned about the supposed leak in Tests I and II only from the Inquirer.

“I would like to ask the NBI about this. I have instructions to my staff to contact the person who made that allegation so we can ask him about this matter,” he said.

Rene Luis Tadle, president of the faculty association of the University of Santo Tomas College of Nursing, told the Inquirer last weekend that five students from Baguio City had submitted affidavits to the NBI saying they had received leaked questions for Tests I and II.

Brion confirmed he was now in charge of the cheating issue, with the President issuing Executive Order No. 565 placing the PRC under the labor department.

He said he had submitted a draft EO for a retake of Tests III and V but that Ms Arroyo told him to wait for the NBI to complete its probe. He said Ms Arroyo had also told him to “consider” the results of his dialogues with the stakeholders in the nursing profession.

“So as matters stand now, I have been given by the President the authority to act on the matter of whether there will be a retake or [not]. I have not acted on the matter. I am taking a fresh look [at the issue],” Brion said.

Asked by Senator Richard Gordon when he would make his decision, Brion said: “As soon as possible.”

‘Liar’

At the Senate hearing, Rosero said what Ang had been saying -- that the board exam was tainted and that the new nurses were not being accepted abroad -- was not true.

She said 21 states in the United States were accepting nurses without the PRC license and 20 states did not require the CGFNS (Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools) certificate.

Many hospitals here were also taking in the new nurses, she said.

Drilon said Rosero was in effect calling Ang a liar.

Ang was attending a Cabinet meeting at Malacañang at the time.

CFO executive director Jose Molano, who was seated beside Rosero, said he was not in a position to respond to the attack.

But Ang later told the Inquirer: “I forgive Rosero. I think she cannot comprehend the damage the PRC has done to the professional board system and the innocent board takers who bore the brunt of PRC’s incompetence when it recomputed the grades and gave a 2-percent bonus to the examinees, thus effectively populating our health care [system] with nurses whose competence is questionable at best.”

He added: “The court will deal with the legal issue, but whether the court can remove the stain [on the profession] remains to be seen. I hope it does.”

Oath-taking to go on

Taking it a step further, she said that regardless of the Cabinet decision, the PRC would administer the oath to the 17,821 nursing graduates who passed the June 11-12 exam and register them when the temporary restraining order issued by the Court of Appeals expires on Oct. 18.

Rosero said that among the passers, 6,000 had taken their oath and a third of that number registered as nurses before the TRO was handed down.

“I pity these 17,000 board passers who don’t know what will happen to them. So we just wait and cross our fingers that this problem will resolve itself?” Drilon asked.

Rosero said she would have to follow the Cabinet decision whatever it would be. But she added: “I think the court [and not the executive branch] will be the one [to] decide this.”

She also said she was confident that the court would uphold the PRC decision to administer the oath to the exam passers.

Drilon expressed dismay at how Malacañang and the PRC were handling the problem.

He told Rosero: “The public is so confused as to what you are doing and what the President is doing. Now the latest we heard is the President is leaving [the matter] to [Brion]. This does not speak well of your commission. In other words, you have practically lost control of the solution to this problem. Isn’t this a mess? It would appear to me you are incapable of handling the situation.”

General supervision

At Brion’s confirmation hearing later, Drilon asked the labor secretary to respond to Rosero’s attack.

Brion denied he was interfering with the PRC. He said that by virtue of EO 565, Ms Arroyo had given him “general supervision” over the commission.

Gordon asked Brion if it was time he recommended Rosero’s replacement.

“We should have fresh leadership in the PRC because the whole country is now being made to suffer the ignominy of having to perpetrate a leakage,” Gordon said.

Replied Brion: “The matter of the PRC’s possible liability for inaction, negligence or omission is a matter that I believe we can legitimately look into, but right now our focus is on the exam leakage itself.

“I will certainly look into that and make the proper recommendation to the President.”

‘Miserable failure’

Citing their “miserable failure as regulators,” the moderate Trade Union Congress of the Philippines called on Rosero and two other PRC members to resign.

TUCP secretary general Ernesto Herrera said the controversy was a result of “the patently inadequate ethical standards of the PRC members and their outrageous mishandling of the mess.”

Herrera also welcomed the DoLE’s assumption of direct supervision over the PRC, saying this would make the latter “highly responsive to the requirements of the professional labor markets here and abroad.”

The TUCP has been an aggressive backer of Filipino nurses, pushing their deployment to lucrative job markets overseas and insisting that professionals should enjoy the right to take their skills where they would get the biggest reward. With a report from Jerome Aning