March 29, 2007	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 9, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, March 28: Despite a lapse of four years the International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI) has not been able to get its engineering programme registered with Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC), putting at risk the future of its 510 students, Dawn has learnt.

The university offered admission to Bachelor of Sciences in Electronics Engineering (BSEE) in September 2003 with a promise that the programme would be duly registered with the PEC to make its graduates accredited engineers.

A student of an engineering discipline needs to have his/her parent educational institution registered with the PEC, otherwise his/her degree would not be accepted in the market.

Ironically, the first batch of the BSEE will be completing their course work within two months and are facing a bleak future with no official recognition of their studies. Until, the PEC recognises their degrees, they will be considered just pieces of papers.

Talking to Dawn, a group of affected students criticised the university administration for taking no interest in getting their programme registered with the PEC despite passing of four years.

“We are on the verge of completing our course work in a couple of months with no clear signs from the administration whether it will be able to get us accredited with the PEC. Every time we go to our dean, he comes up with only one answer that the application is under process,” they said.

At present in total there are 510 students in the department who roughly have submitted Rs120 million to the university in lieu of fees. Every student has to pay around Rs30,000 per semester, a student responded when asked for clarification.

The students threatened that so far they had been demonstrating in a peaceful manner, but, if the university remained indifferent to their concerns, they would have no other option but to protest in a forceful way.

“We have written to the president as well as the university’s rector but so far no response has been received from them,” they said.

When contacted, Dr Khalid Rashid, Dean, Faculty of Applied Sciences, and one of the pioneers who introduced the programme, confirmed that despite best efforts the university had not been able to convince PEC officials to visit their campus for mandatory certification.

Considering some other universities in the private sector which have got PEC’s permission, the IIUI has equipped labs and adequate faculty to run its BSEE, but some how or the other it could not get the desired results, Dr Rashid said.

Unlike the IIUI, there are some universities that do not have their own buildings but managed to get PEC officials’ endorsement for their engineering programmes.

In response to a question, the dean contested that the university was doing whatever it could in this regard, but it seemed that the PEC people did not want the university to run such a programme, he said.

It is hurting IIUI’s reputation as a respected university which it had created over a period of time, he said.