MANILA. Labor Secretary Arturo Brion admitted yesterday that the controversy surrounding the leak-tainted June nursing licensure examinations was far from over.

At a press briefing, Brion said the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) was investigating what he described as "aberrations" in the three lists of nursing board passers from the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) and would submit a report on the results to the "proper forum" on November 6.

"It is far from over. It is still with the courts and, like I said in the beginning, the judicial process will not end until the Supreme Court decides on it," he said.

Although the Court of Appeals ruled to allow some 15,000 board passers to take their oaths and to let more than 1,000 others retake portions of the nursing board questions which had been leaked, parties that had sought a total retake of the licensure exam have said that they would appeal the decision before the high tribunal.

Brion claimed the standards for the investigation into the PRC lists and all his actions were "what would bring the problem to a quick resolution. And our actions to maintain the integrity of the exam are confined within the executive branch."

He refused to respond to questions regarding the petition of former senator Rene Saguisag asking the Court of Appeals to cite him in contempt for delaying the oath-taking of new nurses.

"These reports are very disturbing," he said. "We are not intervenors in the case before the Court of Appeals. [The petition] might be a misreading of the law but I don't want to comment on it because it is with the court and any comment I make will be sub judice and would only further inflame emotions."

Brion, who was an appellate court justice before being appointed to his present post, said he would respond to the petition only if "ordered by the court to respond."

The Labor secretary said his office was looking into the differences between the PRC's three lists: the "master list," which contains the original grades per subject of all the so examinees; the "retake list," which the PRC came out with after the re-computation was prompted by the discovery of the leak; and the third list, or the "deemed pass list," which was drawn up after the Court of Appeals struck down the PRC's resolution allowing the re-computation of the original test results.

"The differences puzzle us...There are a lot of aberrations in the three lists...That's why we are very hesitant [about] endorsing the oath-taking at this point," he said.

Brion said his office began the investigation after 20 examinees approached him "asking us to look into their problems with the computation of their grades."

He said he later expanded the investigation to include a "sufficient" sample of the results.

Brion's chief of staff, Lily Pineda, explained that in general, the irregularities were in the differences between the grades of the unquestioned subjects 1, 2, and 4.

In some cases, she said, the grades for all the subjects in lists 2 and 3 were different from the original master list.

"There are also some who were told to retake [the board exam] who shouldn't retake anymore," she added.