DAVAO CITY—This year would be the test year for the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to show that it was not beholden to any political influence by closing the first batch of nursing schools that failed to achieve the standard of passing percentages for their graduates, the Philippine Nurses Association here said.

In 2008 the CHED issued a guideline requiring nursing schools to have at least 30 percent of their students pass the nursing licensure examinations, said Roger Tong-an, PNA’s Davao regional governor.

By 2010 the guideline could be already implemented, he said, “and we challenge the CHED to implement the penalty by closing them [substandard schools].”

In the Davao region, for instance, there are 18 nursing schools, many of them operating in Davao City, he said.

“Last year alone, only four schools had passing percentages above 30 percent. The rest were below the minimum requirement for more than three years already,” he added.

Tong-an said some of the schools are owned by politicians or families with political influence, and this has tied the hands of the CHED to impose the sanction.

“CHED’s political will would be tested this year. Let’s hope that it would implement the law,” he added.

The challenge was hurled anew after the nursing sector after employers in Singapore and the US said “that Filipino nurses were only after the money.”

“They told us ‘What’s happening to your nurses,’” he said, citing their conversation with Singapore and US owners of hospitals and other health institutions during  their meeting in Singapore in 2009. “They told us that they would opt for nurses from Vietnam, Burma and India.”

“We are their choice actually, because of our strong family orientation but our nurses have built an impression in the US and Asia that their only drive for working there is for the money. For one, our nurses could not be relied with loyalty, they kept on transferring from one hospital to another on offer of higher salary,” said Jinky Millanes, president of the PNA Davao City chapter.