Jawed Salim sweeps PEC elections!

on 27/08/2018

Qadir Shah alleges rigging..

Engr. Jawed Salim Qureshi emerged successful as chairman in Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) Elections 2018 held on August 12.

He received 16,718 votes (44 percent) all over the country and returned for the top slot of the commission for 2018-2021 tenure.

His closest rival Engr. Syed Abdul Qadir Shah, the former chairman PEC got 9,912 votes.
Two more contestants for the office of the chairman Engr. Waseem Nazir and Engr. Syed Ashfaq Hussain got 7,432 and 3,661 votes respectively.

Engr. Qureshi’s rivals admitted he ran a well-organized campaign and also alleged he had the advantage to utilize all resources of the council to influence the voters.

Engr. Qadir alleged the elections were rigged and they were considering to challenge them in the court.

The results, still to be official show Engr. Syed Jamshed Ali Rizvi emerged successful as senior vice chairman with 8,925 votes. He is in Engr. Qureshi’s panel. His rival Imtiaz Shah of Qadir Shah Group got 7,187 votes.

In Punjab, Qureshi’s Engr. Dr. Fazal Ahmed Khalid won as vice chairman with 5343 votes. His closest rival Dr. Jabbar Khan of Qadir Shah Group received 2951 votes.

In Sindh, Qadir Shah group’s Engr. Mohammad Shafiq got 2,145 votes and secured victory as vice chairman.

In KP, Engr. Mohammad Shahab affiliated with Qadir Shah won the poll for vice chairman with 2,305 votes.

Engr. Qazi Rasheed Ahmed Baloch won as vice chairman with 463 votes. He is from Engr. Qureshi’s panel.

Out of 40 members of the governing body of the council, 17 members from Qadir Shah Group managed to win the election

PEC elections and why?

on 27/07/2018

Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) Chairman Javed Salim Qureshi has come up with an idea that he would launch a ‘Technology and Construction Bank’ with Rs.100 billion for encouraging entrepreneurship in fresh engineers.
Javed Salim was in Karachi on July 18 in connection with his campaign for the next tenure as chairman PEC as the council’s elections are due on August 12. He was welcomed by a sizeable number of engineers in the port city, some estimate the attendance was more than two thousand. Vice Chancellor of NED University and Nazir Hussein University were among those present in the moot to give support to Salim and his panel. A part of Karachi’s political following could be witnessed for his panel.
PEC Chairman divulged how he would manage such a hefty amount of Rs.100 for his envisaged bank. “We have around 260,000 engineers registered with the PEC and of them a rough figure of 60,000 are unemployed. If each employed engineer from 200,000 engineers fund Rs.500,000 for the bank, we can generate seed money of Rs.100 billion for the purpose,” he said.
Javed Salim’s novel idea is seen by many engineers in Karachi like the Chief Justice of Pakistan making highly expensive Bhasha-Diamer Dam with local donations. A senior engineer who wished not to be named said it is a just melodramatic tactic to attract votes for the election. He asked why engineers should pay for the venture which indeed should be carried by the governments. PEC is not an NGO, he remarked.
Javed Salim wanted engineers to vote for his full panel as the broken mandate would not help them realize their plans which also include the induction of engineers in policy-making bodies of Pakistan.
PEC chairman who is trying to win one more term has plans to open engineers clubs in Karachi and Jamshoro, for which the council has secured acres of land which his opponents in Sindh claim were obtained by them; not by Javed Salim. “PEC chairman never helped us (Sindh) to realize plans for the betterment of engineers in the province, Engr. Mukhtiar Shaikh said. We did each and everything on our own and materialized our plans in the province.
Javed Salim’s plans apart, two weeks earlier his arch-rival Qadir Shah who also has served PEC as the chairman was addressing an impressive gathering of engineers, a little bigger show than of Salim’s in Karachi. “Javed Salim is responsible for the economic slaughter of engineers in Pakistan as he exempted Chinese companies from making joint ventures under China Pakistan Economic Corridor,” he alleged. His compatriots were free to text Whatsapp messages of the companies which were exempted from forming JVs and allowed to take projects without sharing proceeds with Pakistani counterparts.
Qadir Shah claims he has much better plans for the betterment of Pakistani engineers. We have planned to transform construction activity in the country into the construction industry so that we make it mandatory for the contractors and companies to hire engineers on a permanent basis rather than buying engineers certificates.
This plan would consume the majority of unemployed engineers in Pakistan, he says.
Also, we shall demand 50 percent jobs for Pakistani engineers under CPEC and would bound Chinese companies to follow the rules and regulations of PEC, he says. “For that, we have to amend the rules and regulations of the PEC.”
Aliong with Qadir Shah and Javed Salim striving to attract engineers whose number has now exceeded 260,000, yet another contender Waseem Nazir is vying for the post of the chairman.
A reputable engineer of international stature and running MM Pakistan, Waseem Nazir is very much in the field and has visited a number of destinations to assess the situation before finalizing his panel.
Nazir believes we need modern dimensions, not politics for improving the conditions of engineers in Pakistan. He is very much in the field and is being heard attentively as to how the situation will be changed in Pakistan. In his first tour, he has visited Peshawar, Mianwali, Islamabad, Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Ghotki, and Larkana and is getting to know what issues the engineers are facing there. He claims to have founded the third platform for engineers and is committed to restoring honor and dignity of engineers through transforming PEC into a genuine regulating body. He is an ardent supporter of PEC run by practicing engineers. However, the situation is otherwise on the ground. Although all three major contestants have their plans and visions for the future, political affiliations play a major part in these elections too. Qadir Shah and his associates lost last PEC elections except in Sindh and KP because of the PML – N clout of Javed Salim. Qadir Shah won 2010 elections because of affiliation with the then ruling PPP. Many engineers in Qadir Shah group claim they lost against Javed Salim in 2013 because the JI-backed Pakistan Engineers Forum (PEF) did not support Shah and stood divided between Javed Salim and Shah. This time around the PEF is behind Qadir Shah in full, an informed engineer claims.
However, Engr. Imtiaz Shah, now contesting for Senior Vice Chairman in Qadir Shah’s panel says it was not PEF’s lack of unity but the PML – N got support for Javed Salim by hook and crook. Ahsan Iqbal and other engineer politicians including Shahid Khaqan Abbasi played a major role in the PEC elections. Whatever was the situation during last elections, many players who stood with Javed Salim in 2013 are seen aligned with Qadir Shah this time. Still, what has yet to be seen is how uncertainty on the political arena and popular perceptions about future affect the PEC elections which surely are significant in the wake of the unfavourable situation for the engineering community in Pakistan.

How Software Engineering Can Be Helpful To Make Elections Electronic?

on 27/07/2018

The era in which we are living is the era of technology. Everything in this world now a days is technology dependent in order to achieve quick and accurate results. No Business /Organization can increase their success rate without technology.

        The same scenario is for the countries. The countries in this world who are behind in the technological world are behind in almost every field of life from the developed countries.

Pure elections are very necessary especially for the democratic countries. As the elections are resulted manually therefore the results achieved from those elections are definitely not accurate. As a result wrong person came into power and the entire country suffers for the next 4 or 5 years. So in order to overcome these problems software engineering can be very useful to organize electronic elections. Many trustworthy designs for electronic elections use cryptography in order to assure members that the consequence is error free. However, it is a system’s software engineering that ensures a result is declared at all. Both good software engineering and cryptography are thus necessary, but so far cryptography has drawn more attention. In fact, the software engineering aspects could be just as challenging, because election systems have a number of properties which make them almost a pathological case for robust design, implementation, testing and deployment. Electronic elections basically means that the process of voting should be done using electronic components. It is also known as E-voting.

           E-Voting is basically done in order to aid or take care of the chores of casting and counting votes. E-voting is an election system that allows a voter to record his or her secure and secret ballot electronically. In 2004, it’s estimated that around 30 percent of the population who has voting authority in the United States used some form of technology like e-voting, incorporating direct electronic recording (DER) touch screens or optical scanners, to record their vote for President. Electronic votes are stored digitally in a storage medium such as a tape cartridge, diskette,smart cardor any other medium used for the storage purpose before being forwarded to a centralized location where organization programs combine and organize results. Advocates of e-voting point out that electronic voting can reduce election costs and increase communal participation by making the voting process more convenient and accurate. Critics maintain that without a paper trail, recounts are more difficult and electronic ballot manipulation, or even poorly-written programming code, could affect election results.

Pakistan should optimize their elections by converting them into electronic elections. As the Pakistan is one of the countries who have higher corruption rate which is the major problem for Pakistan. In order to overcome this problem right Government is required to rule Pakistan and for that purpose the elections should produce accurate and pure results. And this is possible when the elections will digitized and managed throughout with software engineering. Results, Criteria, candidate’s eligibility etc. everything should be monitored digitally. That’s how we can see pure elections which will definitely result a developed and prosperous Pakistan.

By: Abbas Mansoor

Aptma wants govt. to allow free import of machinery

on 27/07/2018

The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) urged the caretaker government to immediately notify zero rating facility of sales tax on import of machinery.
The request from the textile association came as 200 containers are stranded at customs ports and incurring unjust demurrages.
`The facility had expired on June 30 and the machinery imported for BMR and investment in Greenfield projects are stranded at the customs ports. Issuance of the SRO has already been approved by the outgoing cabinet and only notification of the same is pending, which require immediate action by the present interim set up, Aptma Chairman Aamir Fayyaz Sheikh said in a press release.
He said the government had extended zero rating facility of sales tax on machinery, not manufactured locally, if imported by the textile industrial units registered with Ministry of Textile Industry, as specified in part IV of 5th schedule to the Customs Act 1959, subject to same conditions as specified therein, at zero per cent sales tax, effective from Jan 16, 2017 until June 30, 2018.
According to him, importers are awaiting for issuance of the SRO to avail the incentive terms of the duty and sales tax free import of machinery.
`The SRO should have been issued by the previous government, or immediately after by the interim government, enabling the industry to install machinery for upgrading and further production,` he added.
The Aptma chief urged the Federal Minister for Finance as well as the minister for Commerce (Textile Division) to take stock of the situation and issue the SRO without further delay

CCP assesses CPEC Roads competition issues

on 27/07/2018

The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has conducted a detailed study to assess competition issues in the road construction sector of the country, and invited public comments over it to make it more inclusive.
The study which has been initiated mainly in wake of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects has been uploaded on the CCP`s website soliciting public comments.
The study, `Competition Assessment of the Road Construction Sector in Pakistan` was done under the CCP’s mandate to carry out market studies to assess competition vulnerabilities and to promote competition in all spheres of commercial economic activity.
The study examines the road construction sector from competition standpoint and discusses the role of different stakeholders including private firms, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and implementing agencies.
It also analyses the regulatory framework to determine whether entry barriers are keeping local or new players out of this crucial sector.
Based on the assessment, the study offers recommendations to remove competition distortions in the sector, improve transparency in the bidding process, and create a level playing field for all market players.