Board of Nursing members will hear the side of the West Negros College nursing graduates against whom they had filed charges at the BAYS Center in Bacolod City starting Monday, Bacolod Rep. Monico Puentevella said yesterday.

Puentevella said this was agreed on in Congress yesterday where hearings were being conducted on the budget of the Professional Regulation Commission.

The hearings of the WNC graduates were initially scheduled to all be in Manila.

The solon said he had asked that the hearings for those from Negros Occidental be conducted in Bacolod City to save on costs.

Hearings will also be conducted in Manila starting today and in Iloilo for students from those areas, Puentevella said.

BON chairman Eufemia Octaviano said a raffle will be conducted to determine who among the BON members will be assigned to the three areas. She said she will inhibit herself from the hearings in Bacolod since she is from the city.

The hearings on the cases for course overloading filed against the WNC nursing graduates will be conducted to give them a chance to explain their side as part of due process, she said.

After the hearings the BON will decide if the nursing graduates had satisfactorily met all the requirements and can be granted nursing licenses, she said.

The BON had initially withheld the results of 599 WNC graduates who had taken the nursing board examination in December and finally released the results early this month after pressure was put on it by members of the House.

Of the 599, the BON announced that 476 passed but filed charges against them for course overloading saying that, until they were cleared, their nursing licenses would not be released.*CPG

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