Reverse engineering, local experts must for prosperity: Engr. Najeeb Haroon
IEEEP confers Life Time Achievement Award on Engr. Irfan Ahmed

Chairman Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) Engr. Najeeb Haroon has said that to improve the country’s economy, work on reverse engineering needs to be done, adding that “we have let our engineers down”. While energy remains a priority, IT and agriculture should be given due importance to improve the economy of Pakistan.
He was addressing as the Chief Guest at the IEEEP Multitopic Symposium 2023 held in Karachi with the presence of a large number of engineers and professionals from all over the country.
Earlier Engr. Khalid Pervez, leading the organization’s Karachi chapter highlighted the need of promoting a ‘Made in Pakistan’ approach.
Engr. Najeeb Haroon said that in small items we import even staplers. In large-scale industries, local value addition needs to be drastically improved.
The western world needs engineers, and perhaps we can earn foreign exchange by body leasing while we create jobs for our engineers in the Country.
We will have to think seriously in this direction,” he said adding that PEC engineers were supposed to work as “a brain” of the country. Unfortunately, the brain is not being used therefore nothing is coordinated.
Instead of its engineering experts, other unconcerned people are in the decision-making positions in every department, due to which no department is working properly.
The PEC Chairman asserted that for some reason the bureaucracy despises the engineering community and has no respect for the best-educated people in the country. This is the reason why good-performing college students are losing interest and admissions to engineering universities are falling. This trend needs to be changed.
He agreed with Engr. Khalid Pervez that “Make in Pakistan” should be part of our policies. Locally manufactured goods should be preferred. For the development of Pakistan, it is necessary to use the services of local experts.
A senior member of IEEEP, Engr. Irfan Ahmad who was the Chief Guest of the closing session being the recipient of this year’s IEEEP Life Time Achievement Award said that while the Country needs its brain, it is being drained out to the West. Only last year, hundreds of Pakistani engineers left for greener pastures as we are only producing job seekers in our universities. We do not even see what is inside the box itself. The doors of the West are now closing down for the outsiders. Only last month Amazon fired 18,000 of its workers and Google fired 12,000 people, including 450 Indian engineers. India was however quick to find jobs for its engineers in other countries. Our government on the other hand has not yet been able to provide an even service structure for engineers.
In the Symposium,18 technical papers on power, energy, telecom, and electronics were presented in various sessions, which also included a Panel Discussion on local manufacturing issues.