An Iloilo City Regional Trial Court judge yesterday ordered the Professional Regulation Commission and the Board of Nursing to comment in 10 days on two petitions for mandamus filed against them by West Negros College graduates for their failure to release their nursing board exam results.

Iloilo RTC Branch 22 Judge Guiljie Delfin-Lim was acting on a petition filed by lawyer Nelia Jesusa Lingaya-Gonzales, one of the nursing graduates, and another filed by 145 other WNC students mostly from Iloilo, on Monday, against the PRC represented by its chairperson Dr. Leonor Tripon-Rosero and the Board of Nursing represented by its chairperson Dr. Eufemia Octaviano and its members Remedios Fernandez, Letty Kuan, and Anesia Dionisio.

Gonzales told the DAILY STAR the failure of the PRC to release the board exam results of about 460 WNC nursing graduates deprives them of the right to join the oathtaking rites of the new nursing board passers at the Iloilo Grand Hotel today.

She said they will stage a rally outside the hotel where the oathtaking will take place and seek a dialog with the PRC representative attending the rites.

She said more WNC nursing graduates are set to file similar petitions for mandamus.

About 460 WNC graduates had taken the Nursing Licensure Examination on Dec. 3 and 4, 2005, after they had submitted the required documents and their names were listed by the PRC on the official list of examinees, Gonzales said.

In the petitions for mandamus filed by the WNC graduates they asked the court to order the PRC and the Board of Nursing to release their examination results.

They also asked that if they passed the examination they be allowed to take their oaths as professional nurses and be admitted into the practice of the nursing profession.

"The petitioners reserve the prayer for the award of damages as they are filing a separate civil action for damages against the respondents in the future," they added in their petitions.

It is not certain when the withheld results of the recent nursing board exams taken by WNC graduates will be released, Octaviano told the DAILY STAR last week.

Octaviano said the verification and clarification process being conducted by the PRC Board of Nursing in coordination with the Commission for Higher Education has started.

However, she said she did not know when it will be completed.*CPG

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