‘CPEC is a double-edged sword’

Chairman ISB chapter & org CMTE says Islamabad must have an expo center

The 25th HVACR Expo which will bless Islamabad’s Convention Centre from April 4 to 7, 2018 is claimed to be the biggest ever among the HVACR annual exp

os which its organizers have organized so far. This time there are many companies from abroad scheduled to participate in the event that have never been here before.

They are visiting Pakistan for the first time, said Chaudhry Nadeem A. Rauf, the Chairman of Organizing Committee told Engineering Review. He claimed never ever before this exhibition, has an event been organized on such a wide space such as over 121,000 square feet. It also makes this expo a distinctive event in HVACR exhibitions’ history.

Despite all distinction that this expo is bringing with it, a lacking is very much evident. This exhibition is out of the expo centre which Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital does not have. Pakistan’s other cities like Karachi and Lahore have big expo centres which host a number of exhibitions around the year. This facility is not available in Islamabad, Chaudhry Nadeem said. The government must decide to provide such facility in the capital. It should be done on war footing, he stressed.

HVACR Society Chaudhry Nadeem is satisfied with the role the HVACR Society is playing in Pakistan. In a country where brain drain is a big issue, and good technical hands dream of going abroad in search of lucrative jobs, training young engineers is a big task. “The skilled people in Pakistan opt for jobs in developed countries”, he said. The rest who remain here require technical trainings and all three centres of the society here in Pakistan organize technical seminars to give them knowledge, he added. They are being trained keeping in view the modern technologies which are entering in the HVACR market.

Also the society is trying to create a linkage between academia and industry so that the potential on both sides is streamlined and used at its maximum level, he says.

Chaudhry Afzal believes we require more and more people as Pakistan’s HVACR market is wide and it is a requirement now rather than luxury. Each and every place needs air-conditioning and the more businesses in Pakistan more is the HVACR activity.

CPEC“It is a double-edged sword”, he observed. Pakistan would be benefitted as the route would be used and thus the people would work and new zones would be set up. But, he said the interests of local people and industry must be protected.The government should think about how the local industry and manufacturing should be safeguarded, he said adding China wanted this route to export its products all around the world and it needed to transfer its industrial units which would benefit it. But would it benefit our local industry, he asked.

The question is if the policy makers in Pakistan are seriously considering the concerns of Pakistan’s business community? It does not seem the government is taking it seriously, Chaudhry Nadeem says. I don’t think it is happening, he observed.

In current situation, he said manufacturing in Pakistan was not less than a ‘jihad’. In order to boost local industry, joint ventures would have been made under CPEC but unfortunately it did not happen and now no one knows about the future.