Pangasinan teems with fake board passers — CSC

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — This province has topped the list of areas in Region I with the highest number of fake board passers. Worse, those in the teaching profession are on top of its list.

Norma Lioanag, Pangasinan’s Civil Service Commission (CSC) head, said fake professional licenses are being sold in the province for as much as P50,000 each. Most of the vulnerable victims are teachers, she added.

Since assuming her post in 1998, Lioanag said about 20 teachers in Pangasinan were found to have fake licenses. There were also 10 engineers working in government agencies in the province with the same problem. Several nurses, she said, were also discovered to have fake credentials.

"Teachers are easy prey of syndicates behind fake eligibilities because they are lazy to repeat their examinations once they fail," she said.

Teachers can repeat board exams until they pass, but some of them apparently have chosen to take the easy way by obtaining a fake license.

The CSC official said they allow those caught with fake licenses to explain first but these people face outright dismissal from service for falsification of public documents.

Lioanag urged officials of the Professional Regulation Commission to take action on the matter as she fears that somebody from the PRC may be involved in the syndicate.

"During our investigation, the accused said they thought they had true eligibility because when they went to the PRC office, somebody asked them what they were following up. Then, they will be given an eligibility which looked exactly the same as the genuine one. However, no one admitted to have paid any amount in exchange for their eligibility," she said.

The CSC can prove the genuineness of an eligibility through their audit of personnel records by looking at the master list of board passers.

Lioanag noted that some of those who have fake eligibilities did not even take board exams at all.