Pleading with the CGFNS

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor CEDELF P. TUPAS Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

The government has formed a "task force" whose purpose is to travel to Philadelphia in the United States in order to plead the cause of the nursing school graduates who took and passed the tainted June 2006 board examinations.

The group has announced that it is leaving on February 26, to meet the officials of the Commission for the Graduates of Foreign Nursing School and try to convince them to accept the passers of that examination who are seeking work in the United States.

They are doing this because of the announcement that occupational visas will not be granted to such graduates until they have re-taken and passed the examination. After all the controversies over the case that had passed, triggered by the discovery that there had been leakages of questions in some of the tests given, and had even led to resolutions by the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, the government had eventually allowed the examinees to take their oaths and be accredited as full-fledged nurses.

But it was a different story when it came to applications for work in the United States. The reports on the cheating had obviously reached the CGFNS, and probably other institutions in the U.S. and other countries that have stricter regulations and adherence to ethics than we have. Hence the demand for a re-qualification of the June 2006 "passers" before they could be considered or granted the necessary visas to work in that country.

Will the appeals and pleas of the examinees and our Nursing board officials move the CGFNS? Aside form the Nursing group, there is also the set from the Labor Department which is also lobbying for the same purpose. That means we will be spending for two delegations to work on the sympathies of the CGFNS. But what if, despite their importunings - and we hope they put their acts together - their plea is not granted?

Will it be back to square one for the poor nurses?*