MANILA, 13 January 2008 — The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) pushed through with the controversial Civil Engineering Re-take Examinations yesterday despite opposition and threat of boycott by almost one-third of the examinees.
A total of 3,261 graduates took the exam while 1,515 opted to boycott it, said the PRC in a report to Labor Secretary Arturo Brion.
The PRC ordered a re-take exams for two subjects, Hydraulics and Geotechnical Engineering and Structural Engineering and Construction, after it ruled that the unusually high grades of the examinees last November were statistically improbable. It also found out that two graduates were caught with cell phones containing answers to 30 questions during examinations. Twenty-one of these 30 answers were reportedly correct.
PRC chairperson Leonor Rosero-Tripon said that the Court of Appeals denied the petition of the graduates for the issuance of temporary restraining order.
The court’s 12th Division said in a ruling: “While petitioners fear the holding of retake examination might render the petition moot and academic in that those who passed the first examination might fail in the second. And therefore can no longer take the oath, such fear has no basis in reality.”
The examinees said they would rather take the regular exam set on May 2008 than re-take yesterday’s examinations.
Members of the Civil Engineers Against Retake Student Union (CE-Agresion), however, filed on Friday morning an extremely urgent motion for reconsideration before the appellate court, saying: “What we fear is for the re-take to proceed which will eventually tarnish our reputation.”
With the court’s denial of the motion, the examinees said they would rather take the regular exam set on May 2008 than re-take yesterday’s examinations.
According to the PRC, Manila had the highest number of examinees with 2,016 out of 2,726 re-taking it; Cebu had 354 out of 711; Davao re-takers numbered 198 out of 360; Cagayan de Oro had 135 out of 342; Tacloban re-takers number 131 out of 142; Iloilo had 93 out of 132; and Legaspi re-takers counted 70 out of 79.
ABS-CBN, however, reported that some of the CE board takers started the national exams, which started around 8 a.m., then walked out. The exams lasted until around 5 p.m.
The board takers said that there were about 400 out of the 700 students in Cebu who walked out of testing centers in the province. In Cagayan de Oro in the south, more than 300 civil engineering graduates boycotted the exam at the Capitol University. Only an estimated 50 examinees continued with the retake. Others have yet to get the number of students who boycotted the exams elsewhere.
