Tag Archives: Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC)

Engr. Qadir Shah accuses PEC Chairman Javed Saleem of economic slaughter of local Engineers

on 11/07/2018

Engr. Abdul Qadir Shah, a candidate for the top slot of the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has alleged the incumbent chairman Engr. Javed Saleem of damaging the interests of local engineers through exempting Chinese companies from forming joint ventures (JVs) under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan.

Under the PEC laws, foreign companies are bound to make joint ventures (with 30 percent share to Pakistani companies) in case of projects in Pakistan.

Engr. Shah vowed to reverse such a decision which he called the economic slaughter of local engineers in Pakistan. “We shall not exempt any foreign company in future and ensure that they form JVs with Pakistan and also give 50 percent jobs to Pakistani engineers,” he said in an interview with Engineering Review.

He said it was unfortunate that the PEC chairman took such a damaging decision in connivance with at least 4 senior engineers including engineer Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasiin the previous cabinet.

When asked how such a decision would be reversed, Engineer Shah explained they would frame new laws so that the JVs were ensured while issuing licenses to the foreign companies. “It was a must for absorbing local engineers in Pakistan.”

Engr. Qadir Shah claims to have designed a comprehensive plan to ensure employment of local engineers as according to him as many as 50 thousand engineers are unemployed in Pakistan. “Each and every contractor would be bound to hire engineers and without which they would not be issued licenses.”

Over 50 thousand active contractors are registered with the PEC and it is compulsory for them to hire engineers for each and every project. Many of them violate the rule and buy relevant engineering certificates from engineers to show hiring just in documents. “We shall stop such practice and the PEC would physically monitor the sites to determine whether the engineers are genuinely hired,” Engr. Qadir Shah said.

Abdul Qadir Shah said the new leadership of the PEC would merge contractors into the construction industry and create a proper mechanism for the employment of engineers. Thus, the engineers would have proper jobs, not the sale of engineering degrees, he said.
Engr. Shah who has served as chairman PEC before Engr. Javed Saleem has in his panel Engr. Imtiaz Shah as the candidate for the office of Senior Vice Chairman, Mohammad Shafiq for Vice Chairman Sindh, RanaJabbar for Vice Chairman Punjab, Shahab Khattak for Vice Chairman KPK and Qazi Rasheed Baloch for Vice Chairman Balochistan.

KWSB’s engineering posts go to non-engineers PEC

on 25/03/2018
PEC has reservations

to raise issue with CM Murad Ali Shah

Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has expressed serious reservations over appointment of officials lacking engineering degrees on positions requiring engineering expertise. Najamuddin Sheikh, a member of the executive committee of the PEC, told media that the recent appointments of the project directors of the Greater Karachi Bulk Water Supply Scheme K-IV Phase-I and Greater Karachi Sewerage Plant (S-III) were in violation of the PEC Act of 1976.

He said the council would soon send a delegation to Sindh chief minister Murad Ali Shah to convey its reservations. He said a letter had already been written to Prime Minster, Shahid Khaqan Abbassi on the matter.

Assad Zamin a BPS-19 official, was posted as the project director of K-IV Phase-I, and Noor Ahmed, also a BPS-19 official, of S-III on January 31. “These two officials hold simple graduate degrees with no relevant engineering knowledge and expertise. They have been posted in place of Saleem Siddiqui and Imtiaz Ahmad Magsi who held relevant engineering degrees and experience,” Sheikh said.

The contract for the K-IV Phase-I is with the Frontier Works Organisation. Both projects got started with a delay of more than eight years and as a result their cost got escalated to around Rs92 billion, based on the figures quoted by the Sindh chief minister at a recent Supreme Court hearing.Their original cost had been estimated at around Rs7 billion (SIII) and Rs27 billion (K-IV). Almost a year ago, Hashim Raza Zaidi was appointed as the managing director of the KWSB on SC directions with specific instructions to turn around the organisation so that water woes of the residents of Karachi could be addressed.The PEC official says that they have been receiving complaints from graduate engineers about violations of the PEC Act’s Section 27(5A) in government appointments not just in Sindh but in other provinces as well.

Sheikh said the law was clear that no person shall perform as a professional engineer, unless registered as an engineer or holding any post in an engineering organisation where he has to perform professional engineering work.”These concerns were the subject of a letter dispatched by Jawed Salim Qureshi, the PEC chairman, to the Prime Minister’s Office a couple of months ago. In the letter, the PEC has expressed concerns over the appointment of officials with non-engineers education and professional backgrounds on engineering posts in government departments. The letter says that the problem isn’t just restricted to Sindh. The chairman of the Water and Power Development Authority, responsible for executing infrastructure projects worth billions of dollars is a non-cadre official, according to the letter.

Similarly, it highlights that secretaries of Irrigation and Communication and Works (C&W) Departments in Punjab, KPK, and Balochistan, DGs of provincial development authorities, the CEO of PESCO, the MD Sui Southern Gas Company Limited are all required to have engineering education and experience under Sections 2(XIII) and 27(5A) of PEC Act.The PEC’s mandate is to regulate engineering profession including registration of engineers, accreditation of engineering education, construction and consultancy sectors.

Stakeholders calls for revoking decision

on 08/08/2017

EDB is a must for engineering industry, believes FPCCI

In a series of concern in the country, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has expressed concern over abolishing Engineering Development Board (EDB), calling for its continuity with more effective and transparent role for promoting engineering industry, especially auto industry in Pakistan. At FPCCI communication said Zubair F. Tufail, the president called a meeting of the stakeholders including automobile, automotive and auto spare parts associations at the Federation House to discuss the issue of abolishing EDB.  The meeting noted that the EDB was playing a fundamental role in promotion of engineering sector, protection of domestic industry and strengthening it by giving incentives. The closure and shifting responsibility of the EDB would disrupt large-scale manufacturing; especially the auto industry and would further complicate the situation including creation of impediments in investments in auto sector especially the vending sector, they said.  The EDB was an affiliated department of the Federal Ministry of Industries. It was established in 1995 with an aim to strengthen engineering sector, promote exports, increase technical training and enable import substitution. The board had presented two auto policies — in 2007 and 2016- which enhanced the number of auto assemblers from 3 to 55. The stakeholders urged proper implementation of auto policy, which would develop competition and bring opportunity of technology transfer. They also stressed on transparency, efficiency, expertise and merit in the EDB to fulfil objectives of strengthening engineering sector in the country and integrate it with the world market to make it the driving force for economic growth as the future of Pakistan depends upon the industries particularly on engineering, chemical and information technology industries which has a huge potential for contributing to economic growth and employment generation. Mr. Tufail assured that they would try to convince the government to continue with the EDB with complete restructuring of its Board of Directors by including representatives from private sector, Board of Investment (BOI) and the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC).

PEC subcommittees declared unlawful

on 17/07/2017

GB dissolves all committees;Punjab Building Committee survives!

‘Of 800 members of 74 committees, 85 percent were outsiders’

The governing body (GB) of the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) has dissolved all subcommittees but one, formed allegedly in violation of the PEC Act and bylaws. The only committee which remains is Punjab Building Committee.

These committees were shaped by chairman PEC, Jawed Saleem Qureshi without due approval of the governing body, a number of the members of the body told Engineering Review.

The alleged unlawful formation of the committees had created deepening unease in numerous senior members of the council as they believed neither the PEC Act had been followed nor the governing body been taken into confidence.

The council is provided by the article 35 of the PEC Act to form one or more committees for carrying out special business. A senior engineer said although there was no specific number of committees mentioned in the PEC Act, it did not mean the law permitted formation of unlimited or a huge number of committees.

To the surprise of many, the number of subcommittees formed to proceed with special business of the council rose to the all-time high as 74—all formed without ratification of the governing body which solely holds, as per law, the mandate of formation, deletion, extension and abridgement of Committees.

Not only that but also the membership on such committees was so high in number that many engineers alleged it was a loss to public exchequer. An engineer claims the total number of the members of all committees was around 800. More ironical was the fact that, from this lot a high number of engineers on committees, only 15 percent were those who belonged to the governing body. The rest of the members making 85 percent of the total strength were outsiders who allegedly had been closer to the leadership.

Yet another senior engineer requesting anonymity also confirmed such a grave situation in the council. He however differed the ratio on the committees saying GB-related members and outsiders on the council might be 35:65.

Deterioration in the PEC is not a new phenomenon as the management committee—a body of senior engineers who are responsible to oversee the working of the secretariat so that the affairs of the council run as per law—allegedly kept mum and avoided bringing the issues to the notice of the governing body and thus failed to stop unlawful use of authority.

The Committees were formed illegally and the secretariat continued with such proceedings of formations, dissolutions, deletions and extensions of the committees without any lawful authority and the management committee failed to oblige its legitimate role to stop these illegalities at the first step, alleged a senior engineer.

The council is now replete with a question as to who is responsible for such a glaring violation of law which has put burden on council’s resources as well as on national exchequer.

The situation, yet another engineer told ER, has turned so messy that the management committee has not met for over 2 months. Many engineers ask about achievements of the council which is supposed to play a crucial role for development of engineers and engineering in the country. The transparency in appointments of 41 sub-registrars is being questioned amidst whispering as regards groupings on political basis in the council.

OBE and Cooperative Learning in Engineering Institutions

on 03/07/2017

In the present time, universities, education regulators and teachers are involved in much discussion on how to best prepare engineers for future jobs in the industry. In this regard, questions such as “Should industry standards be taught as a discipline for its own sake or for the body of knowledge, skills and values to be derived from it (or both)?” and “Are projects executed during study as part of curriculum sufficiently providing the students exposure required to deliver on real-world job projects?” remain central issues in shaping the approach of teachers and policy makers alike. To address these questions, approaches such as Outcome Based Education (OBE) and Cooperative Learning are already in practice in developed countries. These approaches provide opportunities for promotion and adoption of best practices, developing linkages with industry, stimulation of innovation and diversity in engineering education in keeping pace with changing scenario of the world. OBE is an advanced model of education focused on achieving goals through approaches of Problem Based Learning (PBL), Linking Programme Learning Objectives and Outcomes, and Course Learning Outcomes. It is high time that efforts be taken for implementation of OBE based system in all engineering programs as “it is high time we must move forward from the old methods of education”. Benefits of OBE system includes more directed and coherent curriculum, graduates produced will be more “relevant” to industry needs and other stakeholders (more well-rounded graduates), and Continual Quality Improvement (CQI) becomes an inevitable consequence. Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) is trying its best to regulate the profession of engineering along international standards and has arranged several training programms on OBE based systems over last four to five years. PEC became a provisional member of the Washington Accord (an international agreement for accrediting undergraduate engineering degree programmes) in 2010 and is taking all efforts to become its permanent member. Under the guidance, and support of PEC, a very few engineering institutions of the country have embarked upon the OBE system for their selected engineering programs. Its implementation requires some additional resources and big efforts for regular faculty training. However, the benefits of Co-operative learning is still unknown in this part of world. The idea of Co-operative learning is to intertwine academic and practical training in an architecture that puts equal emphasis on theoretical knowledge as well as skills required for practical jobs. By introducing mandatory placements in companies and merging them in to study cycle of a degree course, future graduates could be better prepared for jobs nationally and internationally. Co-operative learning also promotes social and academic relationships well beyond the classroom and individual course creates environments where students can practice building leadership skills. There is a great need for HEC and PEC to jointly organize a workshop in this regard to eulogize its benefits and must take steps for implementation of cooperative learning in the engineering education of the country resulting in improved job perspectives for future graduating engineers.