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.”
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.
