‘Restoring the lost honor of engineers a prime objective’

on 10/07/2018

I will quit if failed to achieve something
in the first year, resolves Khalid Mirza

The greatest objective which the consultants and their representative bodies ought to achieve is to restore the honor of engineers that they had lost over one and a half decade in the country, observes Engineer Khalid Mirza, the CEO of ECIL, limited.

“In the 1960s and onward, engineering community had honor as its greatest asset along with professionalism. Now, engineers stand dishonored as they appear to be involved in every corruption case in Pakistan,” Engineer Mirza said in an interview with Engineering Review.

The politicians use engineers for corruption; sometimes they fall prey to pressure tactics and quite often extend helping hand to politicians, he said.

This has to be changed and a new set of ethics should be enforced as an agenda to restore the lost honor of engineers. For such an objective, universities should be targeted as the fresh engineer eyes government jobs to mint money through corrupt practices, he said.

Thus, the honor of engineers must be restored and, for such purpose, he proposed the public sectors should be thinned and private sector be encouraged.

When asked how such a loss of honor be addressed, he said: good engineers are not being appreciated and instead they are discouraged. Unlike abroad, clients in Pakistan do not honor the engineer. Many engineers wrote on motorways but no one paid attention to them and now such projects are being used as a propaganda tool in the elections.

PEC

There are many influential engineers in Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) but Engineer Mirza believes the circumstances do not allow them to lobby for required legislation although they have taken some initiatives.

“PEC is not powerful enough to force governments for legislation”, he said. Should not PEC or SECP be asked who permitted foreign countries to setup companies in Pakistan without local shareholding, he asked.

Engineer Mirza who has been elected as Vice President of the Association of Consulting Engineers Pakistan (ACEP) is resolute to turn the organization into an effective body which has largely been toothless. “I will quit if we failed to achieve something critical in the first year”, he resolved.

At present, ACEP has 60-70 active members from its membership tally of nearly 800 companies. However, there are around 3000 companies registered in Pakistan. “We shall try our best to vitalize the association and turn it into a national organization.

Moreover, the quality of engineering in the country is also a concern for the association. We require interacting with the engineering universities as well as the government, he says. “We desperately need to bring our house in order.”

Development in Sindh

The development in the province and also in the country is cosmetic, Engineer Mirza believes. It is not aimed at elevating the poor; it’s rather benefiting a select group of the people. He referred to BRT and other huge projects which according to him do not benefit poor people.

On development projects in Karachi during Murad Ali Shah’s tenure, Khalid Mirza said Shah was good as an engineer but he did not have control over decision making. Have a look at the Annual Development Program (ADP), it is a misplaced effort which lacks spirit and monitoring, he said.

He, however, said Shah’s government was better than its predecessor. Murad Shah could have performed better had he been in control.

Engr. Waseem Nazir Ready to Contest for Chairman PEC

on 10/07/2018

Engineer Waseem Nazir, the Managing Director of MMP Pvt. Ltd is ready to contest August 2018 Elections of the Pakistan Engineering Council.
Aspiring for the office of the chairman, he has founded the third platform for engineers and is resolute to launch a struggle to restore honor and dignity of engineers in Pakistan.
“I have worked myself for long and now feel duty bound to do something for engineering community in my country”, He said while talking to Engineering Review in Karachi.
Due to his huge national and international exposure, he feels a dire need of transforming PEC into a genuine regulating body which not only faces the current challenges but also polish fresh engineers into the self-esteemed lot in the country.
Does he have any critical analysis of the performance of PEC so that he can claim to be deserving to lead it now?
“I don’t believe in mud slinging instead am interested in sharing my strengths”, he replied
The most important aspect which should not be overlooked is that the PEC has always been run by non-practicing engineers who do not know the issues of engineers in Pakistan.
The council, right from its inception in 1976 has mostly been run either by politically-affiliated engineers or some from academia. Have a look at last two tenures of the council, one was headed by Engineer Qadir Shah (brother of Syed Khursheed Shah, the former opposition leader in National Assembly and the other by an engineer who is a trader and running a pesticide company.
Since the leadership of the council does not belong to the practicing community of engineers, they were unable to resolve the issues.
The most important job that the council was supposed to do was regulating consultants, contractors, academia, public and private sectors. PEC failed to achieve such an objective because of its non-practicing leadership. Should we write our destiny with such a limited knowledge, background, and national exposure?
Time has changed now and it has changed the council too. Our engineers are not being recognized abroad, they do not get jobs in CPEC. For meeting such challenges, we need to get rid of traditional approach. Engineers want somebody who can think bigger.
We need to bring our house in order in the first place. I plan to build honor and dignity of engineers through grooming and thus boosting their self-esteem. They should be trained and groomed by PEC at engineering academies for a year. Besides engineering, they must come to know about ability, skill, knowledge, and habits.
Is Engineer Waseen Nazir’s group not affiliated with any political party?
One may have his/her affiliations with any party but it does not mean professionalism should be compromised, he says. Ours is a non-political forum no matter our friends may be affiliated with any political party but it has nothing do with the PEC which is a constitutional body.
I plan to regulate engineering profession which the council has to do as only issuing licenses is not enough. For instance, we do not know how many engineers we need in various disciplines in Pakistan. It’s PEC’s job. We need new technologies which again is council’s responsibility.
I intend to introduce a third platform in Pakistan as the two available platforms have become political. My platform offers a choice to engineers and also the leadership with real credentials. Engineers have to compare credentials of all competing leaders in August election of the PEC.
CPEC and PEC’s role for safeguarding the interests of Pakistani engineering community
We need a thorough debate on this issue. Regulation is not about taking a decision in haste or issuing license to the companies. We need well-thought-out policies to meet challenges in the backdrop of CPEC.
Then I have been advocating for long that PEC should have permanent desks in the Economic Affairs Division and Planning Commission. Each and every agreement should be vetted to make sure that there is no violation of PEC laws. In sum, we need an out of the box approach which is a must for our survival

WB to fund NTDC, Sindh barrages

on 10/07/2018

World Bank has agreed to provide $565 million to Pakistan to help build modern water and power infrastructure and remove supply bottlenecks on an urgent basis at a total cost of $688m.

The loan agreements were signed on behalf of the government of Pakistan by Secretary Economic Affairs Division Syed Ghazanfar Abbas Jilani while representatives of the government of Sindh and National Transmission Despatch Company (NTDC) signed the agreements of their respective projects and Patchamuthu Illangovan, Country Director, on behalf of the World Bank.

Under the agreements, the World Bank will provide $565m, including $425m for the NTDC and $140m for the Sindh government.

The first loan of $425m for the National Transmission Modernisation (Phase-I) Project is designed to increase the capacity and reliability of selected segments of the national transmission system in the country and modernize key business processes of the NTDC.

The project will support investments in high-priority transmission infrastructure, information and communication technology (ICT), and technical assistance (TA) for improved management and operations.

Infrastructure investments will create new assets or rehabilitate existing parts of the system transmission substations, transmission lines, or a combination of the two.

The project will establish a robust ICT infrastructure and roll out an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to enhance the efficiency of management and operations.

The TA will help the NTDC implement the project and will improve the company`s capacity for sustainable system operation.

The total cost of the project is $536.33m. The World Bank will provide $425m and $111.33m will be borne by the NTDC.

The $140m Sindh Barrages Improvement Project is aimed at improving the reliability and safety of Guddu Barrage and strengthening the Sindh Irrigation Department`s capacity to operate and manage the barrage.

The financing will help to scale up activities under the original project (Sindh Barrages Improvement Project) whose scope at present is limited to rehabilitating and modernizing Guddu Barrage.

With this funding, the project will support the rehabilitation and modernization of Sukkur Barrage and also support improving the operation and maintenance (O&M) of Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri Barrages over the Indus River through better coordination and monitoring.

The total estimated amount of the project is $152.2m. The World Bank will provide $140m and incremental counterpart funds of $12.2m would be borne by the government of Sindh.

What Made Al-Futtaim Shift from Karachi to Faisalabad?

on 10/07/2018

Al-Futtaim has announced the acquisition of an industrial plot of land in the M-3 industrial city, Faisalabad, to set up a brand new automotive plant for the exclusive assembly of Renault vehicles.
The park is the country`s third largest Special Economic Zone (SEZ).
The investment was originally coming to Karachi, but persistent delays in critical government approvals forced them to relocate.
The investment was finalized in the third week of November 2017, when Group Renault and they signed definitive agreements for the exclusive assembly and distribution of Renault vehicles in Pakistan.
Both the parties expected that the plant would be erected in Karachi in the first quarter of 2018 as per Group Renault standards and car sales were planned to start in 2019, ramping up in 2020.
Al-Futtaim Motors was also allotted 50 acres at Bin Qasim Investment Plant (BQIP) for the plant. However, repeated delays by the Board of Directors of National Investment Park (NIP) forced the company to abandon its site in Karachi and change the plant`s location to Faisalabad, reports claim. NIP is a federal government entity, and various people familiar with the issues at BQIP squarely blamed it for the delays.
Hyundai had also planned to set up a plant at BQIP. However, the same bureaucratic hurdles at NIP forced the Korean auto giant to also shift their investment to the Faisalabad SEZ.
On June 12, Al-Futtaim and Renault announced that the design and pre-engineering work of the project are well underway while on-site activities will commence shortly. The formal launch of construction will be in held in the fourth quarter of the year. Once construction work is completed, the plant will have a total installed capacity of over 50,000 units per annum. Al-Futtaim and Renault expect that the factory will commence production in 2020.
Investors at BQIP have been facing prolonged delays for over a year now. In December 2017 they took serious notice of these delays by the Sindh government in granting the status of SEZ to BQIP, which was necessary so investors could avail tax exemptions and other incentives under SEZs. In response to their complaints, the Sindh government simply said that Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had a busy schedule, and would get around to the issue in due course.
That happened in January when the Sindh government approved SEZ status for nine new business enterprises which would be set up in the province`s three SEZs at Korangi, Bin Qasim, and Khairpur.
The delays include infrastructure building for the zone water, power, sewage, roads, boundary wall all remain works in progress despite some investors having paid billions of rupees to acquire industrial size plots in the zone.
Auto sector people also pointed towards massive cost differences between land in BQIP and Faisalabad, saying costs in the former can be as high as Rs35 million per acre compared with Rs7m in the latter. Faisalabad SEZ also has fully operative infrastructure facilities.
These units would now need to get further approvals from the Board of Investment and Federal Board of Revenue to get tax exemptions and other incentives that come with the SEZ status.
On May 16, Sindh Special Economic Zone Authority (SEZA) CEO Abdul Azeem said that ongoing industrial projects in Pakistan`s second SEZ-BQIP-under the SEZ Act 2012, with more than Rs 30 billion, will be facilitated fully by Sindh government.
NIP had also assured the Sindh government to fulfill their commitment as the developer of BQIP SEZ.
The representatives of K-Electric and Sui Southern Gas Company had assured the provision of electricity and gas to all ongoing projects in BQIP.
All people involved in the matter say the Sind Board of Investment is trying its best to advance the issues, but the delays are coming from the federal government which is the zone’s developer.
On June 6, Sindh Board of Investment Chairperson Naheed Memon said that the establishment of Barkat Frisian Pasteurised eggplant in collaboration with a Dutch company at BQIP is a sign of trust of international companies in country`s economy. Yet 18 months after acquiring the land, with construction almost complete and production planned to begin in a few months, the plant remains without electricity, water, and sewage connections, nor are there any roads. — MD

Port Qasim Project to Help in Ending Power Crisis

on 10/07/2018

Port Qasim Power Project (PQPP) is one of the early harvest energy projects under CPEC has potential to generate 9 billion kilowatts/hour of electricity annually, effectively mitigating the load-shedding in Pakistan and producing tremendous economic and social benefits.

During the implementation of the project, Power China Resources Ltd. (PCR) has followed the principle of “joint construction through consultation for mutual benefits” by sharing advanced technologies and training local talents, said a statement of Chinese Embassy.

According to the operation plan for localization of Port Qasim Power Project, finally, Pakistan will take over the operation and management of the power plant. PCR takes the training of Pakistani workers as its own responsibility. It has provided opportunities for the workers to get familiar with the production and management and master the core technologies of the power plant as soon as possible, thus, laying a solid foundation for the Pakistani side to take over the production, operation, and management.

Pakistani workers accounting for 60% of the whole staff are the primary workforce at the plant. To meet the needs of the local operation, PCR employed 100 Pakistani college graduates in 2016 and sent them to China for thermal power technology training for free. Now, these workers have taken up key positions and become the main force for power plant operation and maintenance.

Port Qasim coal-fired power plant has provided 2.5 billion kilowatts/hour of energy till May 26 and effectively improved the load shedding in Pakistan. The nature of thermal power plant production requires 24-hour production without interruption.

The power grid has been overloaded in the sustained hot weather since April, which has caused the short supply of power. During Ramadan, Pakistani workers, as the major force for plant operation, worked under the heat together with their Chinese colleagues at the frontline.

Meanwhile, the Ramazan traditions are given special considerations. The Pakistani workers are separated into four groups and work in three shifts every eight hours. Chinese workers have volunteered to lengthen their work time, and working in three groups and in two shifts every twelve hours.