IEEEP set to expand its role
With its new leadership, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers of Pakistan (IEEEP) is set to expand its role in the changing environment and determined to extend help to young engineers in the country.
Engineer Irfan Ahmed who has assumed the office of the Chairman of the IEEEP, Karachi Center believes the institute should play its proactive advisory role so that the governments should be able to address deepening issues relating to engineering in the country.
After the new office bearers took over the charge, Engineering Review talked to Engr. Irfan Ahmed to know how he and his team will assert the institute so that engineering and engineering community is benefited in Pakistan. “We are contemplating to change aims and objectives of the institution to adopt a new role. At present, dissemination of knowledge and encouraging professionalism fall in the ambit of the institution as per its existing aims and objectives,” he said.
“We believe these aims and objectives are not sufficient as the environment has changed”, he observes.
Institutions in the country have been eroded which has resulted in emergence of personalities and thus personal interests have superseded institutions. This atmosphere, he feels has affected IEEEP too. This needs to be addressed, he believes.We are now moving towards framing new aims and objectives so that young engineers are extended with help. We shall soon constitute a subcommittee in local council with the task of forming new aims and objectives which will be presented before the central council for approval.
Engr. Irfan seemed resolute to make endeavors to restore self-respect of engineers. “The non-engineer bureaucracy has an upper hand in most government engineering agencies which is against the PEC rules under which no non-engineer can supervise the work of engineers. It is violation of the act of the parliament”, he said. “We want to work for discouraging such a practice in the country. We are thinking to organize a panel discussion on CPEC in the symposium. But CPEC is not the only issue. Instead, each and every agreement that the government has reached at with other countries and which does not favor engineers is our issue. The issue which infringe our rights is our issue and we would like to talk about it. We believe that job creation should be the prime objective of any investment in Pakistan so that the engineers, skilled people and labor should benefit. The government has signed some agreements which do not favor our people. He however did not name such agreements in which the interests of local people have been compromised.
Energy crisis in Pakistan is over?
The technical data that we have received from federal government departments says the energy crisis will remain for few years more. There is a lot of information which is not shared publically, he says. I don’t know how the government claim the energy crisis is over. What is the basis of such a claim? We don’t know. But whatever is evident cannot be denied. Load shedding continues as yet. No matter you name it load management but it is load shedding. I think the way things are moving crisis would remain.
