Twenty-five of the 259 examinees here failed to take the first-ever Bar examination on Friday.
Dr. Elmeir Jade Apolinario, the chief implementer of the local Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease (IATF-EID), said 12 of the 25 earlier tested positive for the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).
“The remaining 13 failed to show up at the examination center,” said Apolinario, the head of the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office (CDRRMO).
The Bar examinees are from the different parts of the region with their schools offering law studies.
For the first time in history, the city served as one of the five testing centers in Mindanao for this year’s Bar examination.
The Bar exam was also simultaneously held Friday in the cities of Davao, General Santos, Cagayan de Oro, and Iligan.
“The city of Zamboanga writes a new chapter in the annals of its history as it plays host to 234 law graduates to take the two-day Bar examinations at the Ateneo de Zamboanga University (ADZU),” Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar said in a statement.
By tradition, the Bar exams are held on the four Sundays of an assigned month in Metro Manila.
However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the examination this year is held at several venues throughout the country, one of which is in ADZU, for only two days.
The second day of the Bar examination is on Sunday.
The current Bar examination is digitalized, allowing examinees to use laptops and digital downloading of the questionnaire from the Internet.
Salazar has issued an executive order, detailing the traffic guidelines to ensure the success and smooth flow of traffic to the Bar examination venue.
Source: Philippines News Agency