By Engr. Hamayun Khan Kakar, Chairman Engineers Grand Alliance Pakistan (EGAP)
We being engineers are equipped and urged to skip from this field and more than half percentage of annual graduated engineers have joined other fields due to unemployment. This unemployment is not just the Curse but due to not having any awareness regarding chances in engineering fields and those vacant posts laying in government departments from years and they are not planning to announce.
Engineers having more than enough qualification for any engineering post are not entertained in any test or interview in any firm or organization because already non-technical and non-engineer individuals sitting on that post, which always results in failure of that project or scheme. We have more than hundreds examples of such cases.
We struggled for more than 8 years and our demands are very clear and transparent i.e.
- Employment for engineers
- Engineers Service structure
- Engineers Technical allowance
- Non-technical Project Directors & Non Engineers should be removed from technical posts.
Our engineers are not even involved in planning phase of CPEC being the Silk Road project. Most of our projects are executed without Pakistani engineer’s involvement which is alarming. Pakistani Engineers are on strike and doing protests and sitting on roads due to un-employment while Chinese engineers are advised to stay in china due to corona which will definitely delay the projects.
Since February 2020 Chinese engineers and labor working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects have been advised to extend their vacation till precautionary measures to limit the spread of coronavirus are in place.
We demand the employment package for unemployed engineers of Pakistan which could help CPEC projects to be completed on time as local engineers are available in any scenario to complete engineering tasks.
If engineers are trained as per requirement in china and then given chance to deploy on CPEC works it would be better for Pakistan to have experienced engineers for future mega projects.
Role of Pakistan Engineering Council is disappointing in this regard as they never demanded and resisted for engineer’s basic role in CPEC. Current Chairman PEC, Engr Jawed Salem Qureshi is presiding on PEC since 2015 but until now not such appreciative steps are taken for local engineers as they are busy in accreditation process from WASHINGTON ACCORD and taking membership in IEP International engineer’s alliance which is not favoring engineers in local market. We suggested that Pakistan Engineering Council to liaise with industries & mega projects to create employment opportunities for fresh engineers. We are facing unemployment for 10 years and engineers are switching their profession to be medical representative, banker, a police officer or a teacher. Even in CSS results we have seen that engineers are selected on merit. In Baluchistan, engineers are even applying for (Local force) levies posts which is alarming.
Our basic demands from Government authorities especially for CPEC projects include well defined employment package for unemployed engineers and Technical allowance for employed engineers and the most important is engineer’s service structure in all government and private departments including engineering institutions & Non-technical Project Directors/Chairman & Non Engineers should be removed from technical posts as in engineering departments and engineering projects technical heads are non-engineers.
Engineer Hamayun Khan Kakar, Chairman Engineers Grant Alliance Pakistan
0333-7840788, Humi0300@gmail.com, Egap.pak@gmail.com
